917.76 
CcSGs 


Spoon  Rtuer  Countru 

j 


Chandler 


XI  B  RAR.Y 

OF   THE 
UNIVERSITY 

or  ILLINOIS 

2)17-73 
CSGs 


THE  SPOON  RIVER  COUNTRY 


BY 


JOSEPHINE  GRAVEN  CHANDLER 


Reprinted  from 

Journal  of  Illinois  State  Historical  Society. 
Volume  14,   Nos.  3-4. 


To 

My  Mother  and  the  Memory  of 
My  Father 


CONTENTS. 


I.    The  Valley  of  the  Sangamon  ......   255 


H.  The  Valley  of  the  Spoon  ..........   271 

en 

III.  Old  Lewistown..  .   284 

rH 
C3 

IV.  Old  Lewistown  —  Continued..  .   298 


V.    The  McNeely  Mansion 312 

VI.     The  Church  of  St.  James 316 

VII.     School  Days  of  the  Poet 320 

VIII.  Here  and  There..                              ,  326 


PREFACE. 

"Whatever  is  implied  by  that  vague  term  the  genius  of 
places  is  comprehended  in  all  justness  of  conception  by  the 
new  collateral  field  of  literary  endeavor  now  coming  into 
such  general  recognition  and  appreciation — the  literature 
of  locality.  How  much  it  has  enriched  the  field  of  letters 
may  be  fully  known  only  to  the  bookman  who,  denied  the 
opportunity  for  travel,  for  personal  adventure  and  discovery 
in  regions  made  familiar  during  long  evenings  under  the  read- 
ing lamp,  is  yet  obsessed  by  that  strange  nostalgia — the 
"nostalgia  of  unknown  lands." 

Through  the  labors  of  the  literary  geographer  he  now 
may  come  to  know  the  London  of  Dickens  almost  as  Dickens 
knew  it;  he  may  traverse  the  Cevennes  with  Robert  Louis, 
the  "well  beloved,"  and  his  little  ass,  Modesta,  or  the  long 
lovely  reaches  of  the  Thames  with  Meredith;  the  Eliot  coun- 
try is  as  an  open  book,  and  who  does  not  know  his  Wessex 
is,  of  a  certainty,  innocent  of  Hardy.  In  America  already 
the  "Thoreau  Country,"  ' ' Whittier-Land, "  and  many  other 
localities  have  come  to  have  a  significance  proportionate  to 
the  deep  interest  which  they  hold  for  the  literary  pilgrim, 
and  sufficiently  recognized  even  by  the  most  illiterate  driver 
of  the  sight-seeing  automobile;  Indiana  as  the  habitat  of  a 
large  and  flourishing  school  of  writers — poets,  novelists  and 
journalists — is  in  the  making;  Bret  Harte  and  Mark  Twain 
have  bequeathed  us  fertile  fields  beyond  the  Mississippi ;  but 
Spoon  Eiver,  that  small  and  tortuous  stream  lying  like  a  bit 
of  negligible  twist  upon  the  map  of  Central  Illinois — Spoon 
Eiver  has  arrived. 

As  comprehended  by  Edgar  Lee  Masters,  Spoon  River  is 
both  a  river  and  a  town.  It  is,  in  reality,  a  collective  expres- 
sion made  to  cover  the  several  community  groups  which  go 

[252] 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  34        The  Spoon  River  Country  253 

to  make  up  the  social  entity  of  his  book.  His  material  is 
drawn  from  six  or  seven  counties  and  includes  the  area 
watered  by  two  small  rivers.  A  glance  at  the  map  of  this 
region  will  show  how  the  various  towns  to  which  allusion  is 
made  are  grouped.  To  the  valley  of  the  Sangamon  belong 
Chandlerville,  Winchester,  Atterbury,  Clary's  Grove  and 
Mason  City;  while  Ipava,  Summum,  Bernadotte  and  London 
Mills  are  in  the  more  or  less  immediate  vicinity  of  the  Spoon. 
Between  these  two  is  the  majestic  and  slowly  flowing  Illinois 
receiving  upon  her  placid  bosom  the  turbulent  outpourings 
of  the  lesser  streams.  Strangely  enough,  the  two  chief  focal 
points  round  which  the  drama  of  "Anthology"  ranges, 
do  not  come  by  name  into  this  remarkable  collection 
of  epitaphs.  They  are  Petersburg  and  Lewis  town.  They  are 
confessed  to  by  Mr.  Masters  in  the  following  words: 

"I  have  lived  in  Illinois  all  my  life  save  the  first  year 
of  my  existence,  which  was  spent  in  Kansas.  I  grew  up  to 
twelve  years  of  age  in  Petersburg,  when  we  moved  to  Lewis- 
town. 

"Both  Petersburg  and  Lewistown  are  full  of  quaint  and 
picturesque  types  of  character,  but  of  a  dissimilar  sort.  Peters- 
burg and  its  environs  are  noted  for  their  high-bred  Virginians, 
their  buoyant,  zestful,  rollicking  Kentuckians,  given  to  story- 
telling, to  fiddling,  dancing  and  horse-racing.  Every  prank 
and  every  burst  of  humor  on  the  part  of  Lincoln  had  its 
counterpart  among  the  dozens  of  the  oldtimers  of  this  local- 
ity. There  are  some  of  this  class  of  people  around  Lewis- 
town,  but  they  lived  on  a  less  joyous  level,  while  the  town 
itself  took  a  more  serious  tone  and  even  an  intellectual  one 
from  the  New  Englanders  who  divided  the  control  of  af- 
fairs with  the  Liberals  and  threw  each  other  into  a  clear  re- 
lief unknown  to  Petersburg.  ^ 

"People  ask  me  how  I  came  to  write  'The  Spoon  River 
Anthology,'  Well,  they  must  look  back  to  the  days  I  have 
just  briefly  sketched  to  get  its  origin." 


254  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

It  will  be  seen,  by  the  foregoing,  that  Mr.  Masters  has 
concerned  himself  not  only  with  individuals  but  with  com- 
munities, and  this  is  significant  for  it  is  only  by  relating  the 
individual  to  the  community  that  one  may  come  to  an  intelli- 
gent comprehension  of  his  relation  to  the  country  in  which 
he  dwells,  the  soil  from  which  he  springs  and  to  which  he  is, 
in  ways  that  are  both  alien  and  integral,  related. 

This  volume  is  designed  for  the  assistance  of  those  whose 
enthusiasm  for  the  poetry  of  Edgar  Lee  Masters  may  inspire 
them  to  visit  the  country  which  his  genius  has  immortalized. 

Although  it  concerns  itself  with  those  places  compre- 
hended by  the  "Spoon  Kiver  Anthology,"  its  territory  in- 
cludes, incidentally,  the  locales  of  a  number  of  poems  of  a 
later  issue  by  the  same  author.  Of  these  "Christmas  at  In- 
dian Point"  and  "Old  Piery"  belong  to  the  Sangamon  Val- 
ley, "Steam  Shovel  Cut"  to  the  Valley  of  the  Spoon,  and 
"At  Havana"  to  a  point  on  the  eastern  bank  of  the  Illinois, 
and  nearly  opposite  to  the  mouth  of  the  Spoon — the  "house 
and  fish  boats"  of  its  allusion  being  the  first  sight 
to  greet  the  eye  from  the  long  bridge  that  spans  the  for- 
mer river  at  that  place. 

My  whole  life  having  been  lived,  with  the  exception  of 
certain  school  years,  in  what  I  have  chosen  to  call  the  Spoon 
River  Country,  my  knowledge  of  this  region  may,  I  think, 
claim  to  be  authoritative.  In  my  youth,  which  was  spent  in 
what  I  have  broadly  classified  as  the  Sangamon  Valley,  I 
had  at  my  command  the  same  resources  of  anecdote  and 
common  allusion  which  gave  to  Mr.  Masters  his  finest  charac- 
terizations; and  with  "Doug"  Armstrong  and  Aaron  Hatfield 
I  have  sat  at  meat.  In  my  later  life  my  residence  changed  to 
the  northern  portion  of  the  region  under  consideration  and 
Lewistown,  Bernadotte  and  other  Spoon  Kiver  towns  came 
within  my  ken. 

Such  personal  knowledge  as  I  have  of  the  people  and 
places  coming  within  the  compass  of  this  work  has  been  aug- 
mented from  manv  outside  sources.  I  have  had  recourse  to 


Vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  255 

the  Illinois  State  Historical  Society  Journals;  the  various 
histories  of  Menard,  Mason  and  Fulton  Counties ;  to  Mr.  T.  J. 
Onstot's  " Lincoln  &  Salem;"  to  Mr.  Harvey  Ross'  "The 
Early  Pioneers ;"  to  the  files  of  the  Fulton  Democrat;  to  notes 
which  Mr.  Francis  Love  made  of  an  interview  with  Major 
Walker  in  collecting  certain  data  to  be  used  in  the  Tarbell 
"Life  of  Lincoln;"  to  various  Lincolniana,  and  to  infinite 
correspondence  and  interviews  with  friends  and  family  con- 
nections of  the  characters  coming  under  discussion.  For  all 
such  valuable  assistance  I  wish  to  acknowledge  my  obligation 
and  to  express  my  thanks. 

I. 

THE  VALLEY  OF  THE  SANGAMON. 

Although  this  little  river  has  found  its  way  into  litera- 
ture through  William  Cullen  Bryant  and  his  "Painted  Cup," 
and  into  history  through  its  association  with  the  young  man- 
hood of  Abraham  Lincoln;  and  although  its  neighborhood 
has  furnished  the  inspiration  for  no  less  than  eight  characters 
of  Mr.  Masters'  "Anthology,'  yet  its  identity,  for  the  uses 
of  that  book,  is  lost  under  the  collective  title  "Spoon  River." 

Physiographically  speaking  the  Valley  of  the  Sanga- 
mon,  though  claiming  one  hundred  and  twenty  miles  in  length, 
scarcely  exceeds  two  miles  at  its  point  of  greatest  width;  so 
that  it  may  be  regarded  as  a  slight  vicarious  atonement  for 
the  un-recognition  of  the  "Anthology"  that  for  the  purposes 
of  this  book — which,  of  course,  are  merely  those  of  com- 
mentation— the  Valley  of  the  Sangamon  is  allowed  to  stand 
for  all  the  Spoon  River  country  lying  south  and  southeast 
of  the  Illinois  River. 

So  considered,  Petersburg  must  be  regarded  as  the  nu- 
cleus. It  was  here  that  Masters  spent  most  of  those  early 
years  before  he  moved  to  Lewistown;  here  he  came  to  know 
personally,  and  through  the  infinite  resources  of  anecdote  and 
familiar  allusion,  that  group  of  characters  which  are  among 


256  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

the  most  benign  and  ennobling  of  the  collection;  and  here 
he  came  beneath  the  spell  of  those  two  men  who  were  to  prove, 
immediate  family  influences  aside,  the  most  constant  sources 
of  inspiration  in  his  life  and  art — his  grandfather,  Mr.  Squire 
D.  Masters,  and  Abraham  Lincoln. 

It  was  to  the  home  of  Mr.  Squire  D.  Masters  that  Mr. 
Hardin  Masters — the  father  of  Edgar  Lee — brought  his 
wife  and  infant  son  on  his  return  from  the  brief  sojourn  in 
Kansas  that  gave  to  that  state  the  honor  of  the  poet's  birth. 
Here  the  boy  lived  with  his  parents  during  his  tenderest 
years,  and  here  after  his  father  abandoned  the  farm  for  the 
profession  of  the  law,  many  happy  weeks  were  spent  each 
year.  Even  after  the  removal  of  the  Hardin  Masters  family 
to  Lewistown  the  boy  returned  each  summer  to  dream  away 
the  happy  days  at  the  old  place,  to  delve  amongst  the  books  of 
his  grandfather's  library,  to  prowl  his  grandmother's  attic 
for  treasure — quaint  old  costumes,  discarded  furniture,  faded 
photographs  and  other  joy-invoking  "rulics,"  as  he  called 
them  (the  usage  of  that  word  is  still  sacred  to  the  memory  of 
that  time).  Care-free  days  lived  under  the  apple  trees  with 
Burns,  in  the  great  hay-barns,  or  on  those  joyous  journeys 
through  woods  and  fields  with  the  beloved  grandmother  which 
are  among  the  treasured  memories  of  every  grand-child  of  the 
Masters  clan. 

The  old  Masters  home  still  stands.  It  is  now  in  posses- 
sion of  the  poet's  uncle,  Mr.  Wilbur  Masters,  though  it  has 
been  remodeled  in  recent  years  and  its  aspect  is  somewhat 
changed.  "The  Squire"  and  his  wife  are  both  dead  but  their 
deeds  live  after  them  and  there  are  none  in  all  the  neighbor- 
hood but  do  them  honor.  Their  gifted  grandson  himself  has 
paid  them  tribute  in  the  epitaphs  of  "Davis  Matlock"  and 
"Lucinda  Matlock."  In  these  two  characterizations  he  has 
used  the  Christian  name  of  his  respective  grandparents,  al- 
though the  grandfather  was  invariably  known  by  the  first  of 
his  two  names,  Squire  being  in  this  case  both  a  cognomen  and 
a  sign  of  office,  so  that  his  full  signature  would  read  Squire 


SQUIRE   DAVIS   MASTERS. 
(Grandfather  of   the  poet.) 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  257 

Davis  Masters,  Esquire.  The  surname  is  also  a  matter  of  fam- 
ily history,  Elizabeth  Matlock  being  the  name  of  Mr.  Squire 
Masters'  mother. 

Although  a  farmer,  Squire  Masters  was  a  man  of  excel- 
lent education;  an  intelligent,  well-rounded  man  and  one 
given  to  the  acquisition  of  "material  things  as  well  as  culture 
and  wisdom,"  having  a  fine  presence  and  dominating  per- 
sonality. A  neighbor  of  his  said  to  me:  "No  matter  what 
day  of  the  week  it  was.  Squire  Masters  always  impressed  me 
as  being  just  ready  to  start  to  church. ' '  Indeed  the  allusion 
was  a  typical  one,  for  his  deeply  spiritual  nature  seems  to 
have  found  its  fullest  expression  in  religious  exercise.  Not 
only  was  he  a  leader  in  all  church  activities  in  his  neighbor- 
hood, but  his  private  devotions  were  so  earnest  and  so  full 
of  dignity  that  one  of  the  family  who  knew  stenography  was 
induced  to  take  down  one  of  the  "blessings"  invariably  in- 
voked before  meat.  It  was  a  perilous  undertaking,  for  dis- 
covery would  have  involved  the  almost  certain  displeasure  of 
the  dignified  old  man,  but  the  task  was  accomplished  success- 
fully and  the  various  copies  which  were  made  from  it  are  re- 
garded by  those  possessing  them  as  among  the  most  treasured 
mementoes  of  the  beloved  grandparent. 

The  devotion  of  the  poet's  grandfather  to  the  cause  of  tem- 
perance once  suggested  to  the  youthful  Edgar  Lee  who  was 
granted  many  pranks — being  the  favorite  grandson — a  joke 
that  nearly  brought  him  to  confusion.  He  had  found  in  the 
wood  shed  a  can  of  bright  red  paint.  He  solidly  covered  a 
board  with  it  and  when  it  was  dry  made  with  white  the  pic- 
ture of  a  foaming  glass  over  the  legend  "Beer  5c  a  glass," 
and  the  further  embellishment  of  a  hand  with  a  pointing 
index  finger.  He  placed  the  sign  at  the  near  by  cross  road, 
with  the  hand  pointing  toward  the  Masters  house. 

That  evening  the  "Squire"  was  busying  himself  about 
the  chores  and  had  started  to  the  barnyard  with  a  pail  of 
swill  when  the  first  "customer"  arrived.  He  was  bleary  eyed 
and  somewhat  unstable  as  he  approached.  "I  see  you've 


258  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

something  to  sell,"  he  essayed.  ''Where  'bouts  do  you  keep 
it,  Squire?"  Mr.  Masters  had  a  cider  mill  on  his  farm  and 
supposed  the  remark  to  constitute  an  insinuation  that  he 
kept  "hard"  cider  on  the  place.  His  wrath  was  superb. 
He  set  down  his  pail  of  swill  and  stood  back  from  it  with 
elaborate  dignity.  "Now,  sir,"  he  said,  "that's  all  I  have 
to  offer  you  about  this  place.  If  that  suits  your  taste,  just 
help  yourself  and  no  charge." 

How  the  visitor  contrived  Ms  exit  is  not  known,  but  a  cer- 
tain small  boy  made  a  cautious  escape  from  the  scene  and  re- 
covered the  sign  board  without  loss  of  time.  It  is  still  num- 
bered among  the  "properties"  of  the  woodshed,  but  the  true 
history  of  its  brief  usefulness  was  never  explained  by  him  to 
the  master  of  the  house. 

"Lucinda  Matlock"  so  essentially  characterizes  the  life 
and  philosophy  of  Lucinda  Masters  that  the  analogy  is  un- 
mistakable : 

I  went  to  the  dances  at  Chandlerville, 
And  played  snap-out  at  Winchester. 
One  time  we  changed  partners, 
Driving  home  in  the  moonlight  of  middle 

June, 
And  then  I  found  Davis. 

We  married  and  lived  together  for  seventy 
years, 

Enjoying,  working,  raising  the  twelve  chil- 
dren, 

Eight  of  whom  we  lost 

Ere  I  had  reached  the  age  of  sixty. 

I  spun,  I  wove,  I  kept  the  house,  I  nursed 

the  sick, 

I  made  the  garden,  and  for  holiday 
Eambled  over  the  fields  where  sang  the  larks, 
And  by  Spoon  River  gathered  many  a  shell, 
And  manv  a  flower  and  medicinal  weed — 


LUCINDA  MASTERS 
•Grandmother  of  Poet. 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  259 

Shouting  to  the  wooded  hills,  singing  to  the 

green  valleys. 

At  ninety-six  I  had  lived  enough,  that  is  all, 
And  passed  to  a  sweet  repose. 
What  is  this  I  hear  of  sorrow  and  weariness, 
Anger,  discontent,  and  drooping  hopes'? 
Degenerate  sons  and  daughters, 
Life  is  too  strong  for  you — 
It  takes  life  to  love  life. 

The  incident  of  the  dance  at  Winchester,  except  that  it  oc- 
curred not  in  "middle  June"  but  sleighing  time,  is  one  that 
Mrs.  Masters  delighted  to  relate  to  her  children  and  grand- 
children. The  story  always  finished  in  the  same  way,  refer- 
ring to  the  change  of  partners:  "And  after  that  we  stayed 

ged  " ;  or  if  by  any  chance  it  ended  differently — this 
romance  of  Grandfathers  and  Grandmothers — there  was  al- 
ways a  demand  for  the  old  version.  "And  Grandmother,  did 
you  stay  changed  after  that?"  And  she  would  answer,  "Yes, 
after  that  we  just  stayed  changed". 

It  is  true  that  the  twain  were  married  and  lived  together 
for  seventy  years ;  that  she  bore  twelve  children,  though  three 
died  in  infancy ;  that  she  wove,  and  spun,  and  kept  the  house, 
and  nursed  the  sick,  and  made  the  garden — -jthis  splendid  vital 
woman — and  most  notably  it  is  true  that  for  holiday  she 
"rambled  over  the  hills  where  sang  the  larks."  Her  intense 
L^pve  of  nature  was  the  attribute  which  above  all  others  en- 
deared her  to  her  family. 

Across  a  portion  of  the  farm  runs  a  littlk-ereek,  a  tribu- 
tary of  the  Sangamon,  and  this  was  theCobjective  of  many  de- 
lightful journeys^jOn  these  occasions  it  is  said  that  her 
joyousness  and  elation _ transcended  every  difficulty  and  that 
she  freed  herself  to  the  great  gladness  of  the  universal  mood, 
her  knowledge  of  plants  and  animals  was  amazing  and  added 
to  this  was  a  fund  of  folk  lore  that  made  these  trips  an  in- 
finite delight.  She  lived,  in  truth,  to  the  age  of  ninety-six 
and  from  "Anger,  discontent  and  drooping  hopes"  she  was 


260  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

delivered/  through  lo,  those  many  years,  by  her  superb  love 

of  Hfg^J 

Edgar  Lee  has  attested  his  respect  and  love  for  his 
grandparents  by  the  further  tribute  of  the  dedicatory  inscrip- 
tion which  appears  on  the  fly-leaf  of  the  volume  of  his  poems 
called  * '  The  Great  Valley ' '  which  reads : 

To  the  Memory  of 
SQUIRE  DAVIS  AND  LUCINDA  MASTERS 

who,  close  to  nature,  one  in  deep  religious  faith,  the  other  in 
(^pantheistic  rapture  and  heroism,  lived  nearly  a 
Hundred  years  in  the  land  of  Illinois 

I  inscribe 
THE  GREAT  VALLEY 

in  admiration  of  their  great-strength,  mastery  of.  life,  hope- 
fulness, clear  and  beautiful  jjemocracy^ 

EDGAR  LEE  MASTERS. 

In  that  collection  of  poems  the  one  "I  Shall  Never  See 
You  Again"  voices  a  grief  and  passionate  regret  that  cannot 
fail  of  appreciation  among  those  who  have  known  through 
close  association  or  intimate  report  the  character  of  Lucinda 
Masters,  and  of  the  close  tie  that  united  her  to  her  grandson. 

The  farm  of  "Sevigne  Houghton"  adjoins  the  Masters 
farm,  and  this  is  the  neighborhood  of  the  Kincaids. 

Where  are  Uncle  Isaac  and  Aunt  Emily, 

And  old  Towney  Kincaid  and  Sevigne  Houghton — 

All,  all  are  sleeping  on  the  hill. 

Goodpasture,  Hoheimer,  Trenary  and  Pantier  are  names 
familiar  to  this  region  but  no  incident  in  their  lives  appears 
to  have  connected  them  with  the  "Anthology".  Apparently 
their  names  alone  have  been  made  to  serve ;  but  the  character 
of  ''Aaron  Hatfield"  is  authentic. 


SEVIGNE   HOUGHTON. 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  261 

The  Hatfield  farm  is  twice  referred  to.     That  character 
designated  as  ' '  The  Unknown ' '  recalls  how 
As  a  boy,  reckless  and  wanton, 
Wandering  with  gun  in  hand  thro'  the  field 
Near  the  mansion  of  Aaron  Hatfield 
I  shot  a  hawk  perched  on  the  top  of  a  dead 
tree; 

and  * '  Hare  Drummer ' '  wonders : 

Do  the  boys  and  girls  still  go  to  Siever's 
For  cider  after  school  in  summer? 
Or  gather  hazelnuts  among  the  thickets 
On  Aaron  Hatfield 's  farm  when  the  frosts 
begin? 

The  Hatfield  mansion  was,  in  its  day,  the  most  preten- 
tious in  the  neighborhood.     It  has  since  burned,  but  the  old 
Menard  County  atlas  has  preserved  it  for  us   with   all   the 
quaint  dignity  of  the  wood  cut.     To  this  period  of  his  life 
belongs  the  " memory-picture"  of  the  pioneer: 
Better  than  granite,  Spoon  Kiver, 
Is  the  memory  picture  you  keep  of  me 
Standing  before  the  pioneer  men  and  women 
There  at  Concord  Church  on  communion  day. 
Speaking  in  broken  voice  of  the  peasant  youth 
Of  Galilee  who  went  to  the  city 
And  was  killed  by  bankers  and  lawyers ; 
My  voice  mingling  with  the  June  wind 
That  blew  over  the  wheat  fields  from  Atter- 

bury; 

While  the  white  stones  in  the  burying  ground 
Around  the  church  shimmered  in  the  summer 

sun. 

And  there,  though  my  own  memories 
Were  too  great  to  bear,  were  you,  0  pioneers, 
With  bowed  heads  breathing  forth  your  sor- 
rows 


262  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

For  sons  killed  in  battle  and  the  daughters 
And  little  children  who  vanished  in  life's 

morning, 

Or  at  the  intolerable  hour  of  noon. 
But  in  those  moments  of  tragic  silence, 
When  the  wine  and  bread  were  passed, 
Came  the  reconciliation  for  us — • 
Us  the  ploughmen  and  hewers  of  wood, 
Us  the  peasants  of  Galilee — 
To  us  came  the  Comforter 
And  the  consolation  of  the  tongues  of  flame ! 

Concord  church  is  three  miles  north  of  Petersburg.  It 
was  established  in  1830  and  was  the  first  church  of  the  de- 
nomination known  as  the  Cumberland  Presbyterian  to  be 
established  in  the  county.  The  building  in  which  Aaron  Hat- 
field  worshiped  is  now  replaced  by  a  modern  structure  but 
the  " white  stones  in  the  burying  ground  around  the  church" 
still  shimmer  in  the  summer  sun,  and  the  June  wind  still 
blows  across  the  wheat  fields  from  Atterbury  three  miles 
away. 

One  wishes  that  he  might  have  remained  on  his  com- 
fortable farm  and  might,  eventually,  have  come  to  rest  in 
that  old  graveyard  that  is  sweet  with  clover  and  odorous  with 
arbor  vitae  but  history  relates  that  in  his  latter  years  he  sold 
the  farm  and  moved  to  Petersburg,  investing  his  substance  in 
a  home,  a  store,  a  lumber  yard,  a  flouring  mill  and  various  en- 
terprises. The  guileless  temperament  of  the  kindly  old  man 
made  him  unfit  for  commercial  life,  and  partly  through  bad 
management  and  partly  through  the  contrivance  of  the  un- 
scrupulous he  lost  one  after  another  of  his  various  possessions 
and  came,  in  the  end,  almost  to  penury.  His  misfortunes  so 
preyed  upon  him  that  before  his  death  his  mind  began  to  show 
affection.  He  died  at  the  age  of  eighty.  One  hopes  that 
sometimes  in  those  later  years  to  him  also 

came  the  comforter, 
And  the  consolation  of  the  tongues  of  flame ! 


HANNAH  ARMSTRONG. 


Vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  263 

Miller 's  Ferry,  but  a  few  miles  north  and  east  of  Concord 
Church,  is  the  " Miller's  Ford"  of  the  " Anthology ".  The 
"deep  woods"  of  " William  Good's"  allusion  still  cover  the 
hills  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Sangamon  at  this  point,  and 

doubtless  you  still  can  see  .,.  ,  , 

at  twilight 

The  soft  winged  bats  fly  zig  zag  here  and  there. 
Here  " Thomas  Ross"  saw  a  cliff  swallow  make  "her  nest 
in  a  hole  in  the  high  clay  bank ' '  and  drew  from  it  an  analogy 
of  his  own  life. 

To  "James  Garber"  the  place  had  a  symbolic  meaning. 
He  bids  the  passer-by,  after  life  shall  have  brought  him  "un- 
derstandings, ' '  take  thought  of  him  and  of  his  path 

who  walked  therein  and  knew 
That  neither  man  or  woman,  neither  toil, 
No  duty,  gold  nor  power 
Can  ease  the  longing  of  the  soul, 
The  loneliness  of  the  soul! 

All  the  associations  of  this  place  are  sad,  and  saddest  of 
all  perhaps  are  the  musings  of  "Russell  Kincaid"  in  those 
last  days  of  his  life  when  he  sat  in  the 

forsaken  orchard 

Where  beyond  the  fields  of  greenery  shimmered 
The  hills  of  Miller's  Ford; 

voicing  an  atavistic  longing  that  he  might  have  been  a  tree, 
Then  I  had  fallen  in  the  cyclone 
Which  swept  me  out  of  the  soul's  suspense 
Where  it's  neither  earth  nor  heaven. 
One  character,  at  least,  of  this  group  may  be  identified. 
"James  Garber"  is  the  same  who  "wrote  beautifully,"  and 
whose  letter,  written  for  "Hannah  Armstrong"  was,  maybe, 
"lost  in  the  mails".     His  real  name  was  Jacob  Garber  and 
the  letter  incident  is  authentic.     He  was,    at    one    time,    a 
neighbor  of  Hannah  Armstrong,  though  she  belonged,  at  an 
earlier  period,  in  the  Clary's  Grove  group. 

Mr.  T.  J.  Onstot  says  in  his  "Lincoln  &  Salem":  "Mil- 
ler's Ferry  was  *  *  *  once  surveyed  for  a  town  and  was  called 


264  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

Huron.  My  brother  K.  J.  Onstot  has  a  plat  of  it  in  Lincoln's 
own  handwriting  and  prizes  it  very  highly.  The  town  looks 
very  fine  on  paper,  though  there  was  only  one  house  in  it  in 
its  earlier  days". 

Walter  Pater,  writing  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  says  that 
"two  ideas  were  especially  confirmed  in  him  as  reflexes  of 
things  that  had  touched  his  life  in  childhood  beyond  the 
depths  of  other  impressions — the  smiling  of  women  and  the 
motion  of  great  waters." 

It  is  so  that  all  true  biography  should  be  written.  In  this 
sense  all  art  is  autobiographic,  since  in  creative  work  alone 
man  records  the  " adventure  of  his  soul".  It  is  in  the  study 
of  those  impressions  "especially  confirmed  in  him"  as  a  re- 
flex that  we  come  to  the  life  of  Abraham  Lincoln  and  its  in- 
fluence upon  the  life  and  art  of  Masters  through  its  immediate 
association  with  the  Spoon  River  country. 

Three  characters  of  the  "Anthology"  are  concerned  with 
Lincoln:  "Anne  Rutledge",  "Hannah  Armstrong"  and 
"William  H.  Herndon";  four  poems  of  the  collection, 
"The  Great  Valley",  "The  Lincoln  and  Douglas  Debates", 
"Autochthon",  "Gobineau  to  Tree"  and  "Old  Peiry",  and 
not  less  than  four  poems  from  the  volume  called  * '  The  Open 
Sea"  are  written  around  him. 

New  Salem,  the  home  of  Lincoln  from  1831  to  1837  is  two 
miles  south  of  Petersburg,  and  just  southwest  of  Salem  is 
Clary's  Grove.  Clary's  Grove  is,  in  fact,  exactly  what  the 
name  implies,  a  grove.  It  is  not  found  on  any  map  but  Lin- 
colniana  has  comprehended  it  too  completely  to  require  fur- 
ther proof  of  authenticity.  There  is  no  history  treating  of 
these  early  years  of  Lincoln  that  does  not  speak  of  the 
Clary's  Grove  boys  and  their  staunch  adherence  to  him  from 
his  initiation  among  them  in  the  famous  wrestling  match  with 
Jack  Armstrong  till  their  final  dramatic  appearance  in  1859 
at  the  hall  of  the  convention  which  gave  him  the  nomination 
that  ultimately  placed  him  in  the  Executive  Chair. 

Clary's  Grove  was  one  of  the  first  neighborhoods  to  be 


FIDDLER  JONES. 


vol.  xiv.  NOB.  3-4        y^e  Spoon  River  Country  265 

inhabited  by  the  whites.  Most  of  the  settlers  came  from  Ken- 
tucky and  Tennessee.  Among  the  prominent  families  were 
the  Clarys,  Armstrongs,  Watkinses,  Potters,  Jones  and 
Greens ;  all  fine  staunch  people,  but  whose  boys  were  typical 
sons  of  the  frontier;  fond  of  drinking,  hard  riding,  horse- 
racing,  dancing,  fiddling  and  all  rude  sports,  particularly 
those  which  constituted  tests  of  strength.  Among  the  Wat- 
kinses and  Armstrongs,  especially,  there  persists  to  this  day  a 
tradition  of  horse-racing  and  fiddling.  There  is,  as  there  has 
always  been,  a  "Fiddler  Watkins"  and  a  "Fiddler  Arm- 
strong", and  a  race  track  is  a  common  adjunct  of  their  ample 
farms. 

Where  is  old  Fiddler  Jones 
Who  played  with  life  all  his  ninety  years, 
Braving  the  sleet  with  bared  breast, 
Drinking,  rioting,  thinking  neither  of  wife 

nor  kin, 

Nor  gold  nor  love  nor  heaven? 
Lo !  He  babbles  of  the  fish-fries  of  long  ago, 
Of  the  horse-races  long  ago  at  Clary's  Grove, 
Of  what  Abe  Lincoln  said 
One  time  at  Springfield. 

"Fiddler  Jones"  was  the  brother  of  "Hannah  Arm- 
strong". All  of  that  family  were  "first  class  fighting  men", 
tall  and  fine  looking.  The  family  came  from  Green  County, 
Kentucky,  and  John,  who  was  never  addressed  or  spoken  of 
by  any  other  name  than  "Fid"  or  "Fiddler",  had,  while  in 
that  state,  received  considerable  education.  He  played  "by 
note",  composed,  and  even  wrote  music  for  his  violin.  He 
was  a  dancing  master  as  well  and  was  distinguished  by  a 
manner  and  bearing  quite  at  variance  with  the  crude  behavior 
of  his  period.  Many  of  his  pupils  still  recall  him  clearly  and 
his  name  is  associated  with  nearly  all  of  the  festivities  of  his 
day.  His  fiddle,  which  was  really  a  viola,  is  still  the  cher- 
ished possession  of  the  family.  He  died  a  few  years  ago  in 
Fairbury,  Nebraska,  leaving  behind  him  a  comfortable  estate. 
His  mantle  has,  happily,  fallen  upon  the  shoulders  of  his 


266  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

nephew,  Mr.  John  Armstrong  of  Oakford,  Illinois,  son  of 
Hannah  Armstrong.  His  music  is  still  in  requisition  and  his 
clear  memory  makes  him  one  of  the  few  living  men  connecting 
the  present  generation  with  the  Great  Emancipator. 

The  friendship  between  Lincoln  and  the  Armstrongs 
began  just  as  history  relates,  with  a  wrestling  match  between 
Jack  Armstrong  and  Lincoln — an  affair  in  which  the  latter 
came  out  victor.  Thereafter  Lincoln  lived  with  the  Arm- 
strongs for  a  time  and  always,  one  is  told,  regarded  their 
house  as  his  home ;  indeed  the  motherly  Hannah  treated  him 
as  one  of  her  own  sons.  The  opportunity  for  requital  of  her 
great  kindness  came  to  Lincoln  when  he  undertook  the  de- 
fense of  William  Armstrong  (better  known  as  "Duff"),  the 
youngest  son  of  the  family,  in  the  famous  "almanac  trial" 
which  ended  in  his  acquittal. 

It  is  the  same  son  who,  in  the  epitaph,  "Hannah 
Armstrong,"  is  called  "Doug."  Mr.  John  Armstrong  has 
told  me  the  letter  incident  referred  to  in  the  "Anthology." 
Duff,  he  said,  had  asked  for  his  discharge  from  the  army, 
having  become  painfully  affected  by  sciatic  rheumatism.  The 
discharge  had  been  granted  but  the  papers,  for  some  reason, 
withheld  for  a  time  and  the  boy  kept  on  guard  duty  though 
his  suffering  was  considerable.  He  wrote  his  mother  asking 
her  to  appeal  personally  to  "Abe"  to  urge  matters,  so  Mrs. 
Armstrong  got  "Uncle  Jakey"  Garber  to  write  the  letter. 
Soon  a  telegram  came  from  the  President  saying  that  Duff 
would  be  home  immediately  and  so,  presently,  he  was,  anol 
one  is  glad  to  know  that  "Aunt  Hannah"  did  not  have  to 
travel  all  the  way  to  Washington  as  demanded  by  the  ex- 
igencies of  art.  She  was  one  of  the  fine  old  women  of  her 
generation,  living  into  the  nineties  and  dying  in  Winterset, 
Iowa.  As  for  Duff,  he  became,  after  the  war,  a  veterinarian 
and  has  eaten  many  a  meal  in  my  father's  house  as  he  went 
from  one  point  to  another  about  the  countryside. 

The  town  of  New  Salem,  which  declined  with  the  build- 
ing up  of  Petersburg,  has  been  rebuilt  within  the  last  sev- 
eral summers.  The  Old  Salem  League  was  formed  for  this 


. 


DOUG.   ARMSTRONG 
Better  known  as  "Duff.' 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  267 

express  purpose,  and  the  plan  is  to  make  the  village  a  per- 
manent memorial  to  him  who  for  a  season  lingered  there. 
William  Randolph  Hearst  had  previously  bought  the  site  and 
donated  it  for  the  purpose.  Several  log  houses  have  been 
constructed,  some  of  them  exactly,  and  all  of  them  approxi- 
mately upon  the  sites  of  the  buildings  that  formerly  com- 
prised the  village.* 

The  splendid  pageant  written  and  directed  by  Florence 
McGill  Wallace  and  staged  on  the  New  Salem  common  on  the 
2nd  and  3rd  of  September,  1918,  as  a  part  of  the  Centennial 
observance  of  the  State  of  Illinois,  brought  those  who  saw  it 
strangely  close  to  that  period  of  Lincoln's  life.  All  those 
taking  part  in  the  performance  were,  wherever  possible, 
members  of  the  families  of  those  involved  in  the  history  so 
revivified.  Some  of  the  cabins  were  occupied  by  descendants 
of  the  very  people  who  built  the  originals,  and  this  personal 
element  in  the  participation  of  the  Menard  County  folk  gave 
to  the  enterprise  a  spirit  unique  in  pageantry. 

Four  episodes  from  the  life  of  Lincoln  while  at  New 
Salem  constituted  the  dramatic  theme.  1.  The  coming  of  the 
Big  Brother  (the  arrival  of  Lincoln  at  Salem  on  a  flat-boat). 

2.  Arrival  of  Clary's  Grove  boys  (the  initiation  of  Lincoln 
among  them  by  way  of  a  wrestling  match).    3.  " Captain  Lin- 
coln" (the  incident  of  the  Clary's  Grove  boys  choosing  a  cap- 
tain for  the  New  Salem  contingent  for  the  Black  Hawk  war) . 
4.  Sunday  afternoon  in  Salem.    The  village  belle,  Anne  Rut- 
ledge. 

The  last  mentioned  episode  comprehends  Lincoln's  woo- 
ing as  well  as  his  great  grief  after  the  death  of  her  who  was 
his  first  sweetheart.  It  was,  as  it  might  well  have  been,  the 
most  stirring  and  significant  of  them  all,  for  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  his  love  for  Anne  Rutledge  was  the  greatest  of 
the  shaping  forces  that  touched  that  soul  already  starred 
by  destiny. 

*Since  made  a  State  Park  by  Act  of  the  Legislature,  approved   April 

3,  1919.      Contains  museum  where   Lincoln  memorials   and   relics  will  be 
preserved. 


268  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

Out  of  me  unworthy  and  unknown 

The  vibrations  of  deathless  music: 

"With  malice   toward   none,   with   charity 
for  all." 

Out  of  me  the  forgiveness  of  millions  toward 
millions, 

And  the  beneficent  face  of  a  nation 

Shining  with  justice  and  truth. 

I  am  Anne  Rutledge  who   sleeps   beneath 
these  weeds, 

Beloved  in  life  of  Abraham  Lincoln, 

Wedded  to  him,  not  through  union, 

But  through  separation. 

Bloom  forever,  0  Republic, 

From  the  dust  of  my  bosom ! 

Anne  Rutledge!  A  fragrance  hangs  about  the  name — 
the  "Fragrance  of  things  destined  for  immortality."  Al- 
ready the  hand  of  the  iconoclast  has  been  at  work,  but  he  has 
anticipated  his  hour,  and  the  affirmation  of  history,  based 
upon  the  authentic  testimony  of  those  yet  living,  has  made 
her  place  secure.  No  myth,  no  "legend",  may  obscure  her 
claim  who  has  inspired  to  great  purpose  the  heart  of  a  great 
man. 

Her  body  was  laid  to  rest  in  the  old  Concord  cemetery. 
Not  the  one  adjacent  to  the  church  in  which  Aaron  Hatfield 
worshipped,  but  one  about  a  mile  away,  lost,  not  only  to  the 
view,  but  almost  to  the  memory,  and  which  no  longer  has 
even  a  road  by  way  of  approach.  Her  ashes  have  since  been 
removed  to  Oakland  cemetery  which  is  on  a  beautiful  wooded 
hill  near  Petersburg.  Within  the  year  a  great  granite  boul- 
der has  been  erected  to  her  memory,  having  the  Masters' 
epitaphic  poem,  taken  from  the  "Anthology,"  graved  upon 
its  face,  but  prior  to  the  placing  of  this  monument  a  rough 
stone  taken  from  the  dam  of  the  old  Rutledge  mill  at  New 
Salem  most  appropriately  marked  the  grave  of  this  sweet 
girl  whose  unostentatious  nature  sought  no  exaltation  but 


Vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  269 

the  exaltation  of  the  spirit.  Even  to  approach  that  spot  is 
to  feel  the  recrudescence  of  old  pain.  One  is  tense  with  the 
agony  that  searched  the  heart  of  Lincoln  on  that  storm-torn 
night  when  he  cried  out  to  his  friend:  "Oh,  I  cannot  sleep 
while  the  rain  is  falling  on  her  grave ! ' '  One  is  sad  with  the 
denials  of  her  youth  and  of  her  tender  passion.  But  to  visit 
the  little  town  where  she  has  lived,  and  where,  near-by,  her 
kinsfolk  go  about  their  daily  rounds,  where  the  drama  of  her 
brief  life  was  enacted,  is  to  feel  the  dignity  of  life  and  the 
great  peace  of  soul-quietness. 

In  "William  H.  Herndon"  Masters  has  crystalized  the 
long  retrospect  of  the  man  who,  better  than  any  other,  knew 
the  character  of  Lincoln  after  its  nature  had  reached  its  full 
maturity  and  during  the  period  of  his  professional  life.  The 
law-partnership  of  the  two  men  began  in  1843.  Lincoln  was 
then  thirty-four  and  Herndon  was  nine  years  his  junior. 
Their  partnership  was  dissolved  only  by  the  death  of  the 
senior  member  in  Ford's  Theater  in  1865. 

Horace  White  in  his  introduction  to  the  second  edition 
of  the  Herndon  "Life  of  Abraham  Lincoln"  says  of  the 
author:  "What  Mr.  Lincoln  was  after  he  became  President 
can  best  be  understood  by  knowing  what  he  was  before.  The 
world  owes  more  to  Wm.  H.  Herndon  for  this  particular 
knowledge  than  to  all  other  persons  taken  together.  It  is  no 
exaggeration  to  say  that  his  death  ....  removed  from  the 
earth  the  person  who  of  all  others  had  most  thoroughly 
searched  the  sources  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  biography  and  had 
most  attentively,  intelligently  and  also  lovingly  studied  his 
character." 

Mr.  Herndon  spent  his  declining  years  on  his  farm.  The 
old  house,  which  is,  as  described,  "perched  on  a  bluff,"  over- 
looks the  Sangamon.  It  is  on  what  is  known  thereabout  as 
the  Menard  County  Eoad.  He  was  seventy-three  at  the  time 
of  his  death.  He  had  lived  in  great  times  and  had  seen  much 
history  in  the  making ;  moreover  his  last  great  task  had  been 
the  preparation,  with  the  assistance  of  Mr.  Jesse  W.  Weik, 
of  the  three  volume  biography  of  the  man  who  had  engaged 


270  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

first  his  admiration,  then  his  love,  and  afterwards  his  sense 
of  the  patriotic  responsibility  which  his  knowledge  dictated 
towards  the  coming  generation. 

No  line  of  "Herndon"  may  be  omitted  from  this  work; 
not  the  poet's  vision  of  the  old  man  gazing  into  the  shining 
glass  of  his  memory;  nor  his  vision  of  the  old  man's  vision; 
nor  the  strangely  Japanese  comprehension  of  the  whole  in 
the  association  of  natural  phenomenon : 

There  by  the  window  in  the  old  house 
Perched  on  the  bluff,  overlooking  miles  of 

valley, 
My  days  of  labor  closed,  sitting  out  life's 

decline, 

Day  by  day  did  I  look  in  my  memory, 
As  one  who  gazes  in  an  enchantress'  crystal 

globe, 

And  I  saw  the  figures  of  the  past, 
As  if  in  a  pageant  glassed  in  a   shining 

dream, 

Move  through  the  incredible  sphere  of  time. 
And  I  saw  a  man  rise  from  the  soil  like  a 

fabled  giant 

And  throw  himself  over  a  deathless  destiny, 
Master  of  great  armies,  head  of  the  republic, 
Bringing  together  in  a  dithyramb  of  recreat- 
ive song 

The  epic  hopes  of  a  people ; 
At  the  same  time  vulcan  of  sovereign  fires, 
Where  imperishable  shields  and  swords  are 

beaten  out 

From  spirits  tempered  in  heaven. 
Look  in  the  Crystal !    See  how  he  hastens  on 
To  the  place  where  his  path  comes  up  to 

the  path 

Of  a  child  of  Plutarch  and  Shakespeare. 
0  Lincoln,  actor  indeed,  playing  well  your 
part, 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  271 

And  Booth,  who  strode  in    a   mimic    play 

within  a  play, 
Often  and  often  I  saw  you, 
As  the  cawing  crows  winged  their  way  to 

the  woods 

Over  my  house-top  at  solemn  sunsets, 
There  by  my  window, 
Alone. 

II. 

THE  VALLEY  OF  THE  SPOON. 

It  is  interesting  to  conjecture  in  considering  the  geo- 
graphic nomenclature  of  the  country  from  which  Mr.  Mas- 
ters drew  the  material  for  his  "Anthology"  just  why  he 
should  have  chosen  " Spoon  River"  for  the  title  of  his  book. 
There  was,  for  alternative,  that  lovely  Indian  name  of 
Sangamon;  and  Lewistown  is  a  town  so  closely  associated, 
serving  as  prototype  in  fact,  that  to  all  intents  and  purposes 
Lewistown  is  "Spoon  River."  It  is  true  that  the  characters 
drawn  from  this  section  enormously  preponderate  numer- 
ically; that  the  name  holds  in  an  exceptional  degree,  by  the 
very  fact  of  its  strangeness,  what  Amy  Lowell  calls  the 
"pungency  of  place;"  and  there  is  the  matter  of  phonetic 
syzygy !  Is  there  not  a  story  concerned  with  Margaret  Fuller 
and  her  awakened  appreciation  of  the  beauties  of  her  own 
tongue  through  the  admiration  of  an  Italian  friend,  for  that 
word — so  homely  of  association  and  so  beautiful  for  the  dis- 
posal of  its  consonants  and  vowels — cellar  door?  And  cer- 
tainly the  name  Spoon  River,  once  one  has  come  to  love  it, 
whether  from  the  felicity  which  it  confers  upon  the  ear  or 
through  the  divining  vision  of  its  great  interpreter — Spoon 
River  is  exquisite  to  say. 

Although  four  or  five  generations  suffice  to  tell  the  tale 
of  the  Englishman's  association  with  this  river,  already  there 
has  grown  up  about  it,  as  about  those  brilliant  figures  that 
have  passed  from  the  realm  of  history  to  high  romance,  that 
mass  of  incident  which  unconsciously  has  been  shaped  by  the 


272  Josephine  "Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

synthetic  tendencies  of  the  imagination  to  what  the  French 
biographer  delights  to  call  a  legend.  Something  of  evil  is 
implicit,  a  "power  of  sinister  presence,"  but  withal  a  loveli- 
ness so  intimate  and  compelling  that  it  must  lie  forever  like 
a  mistress  upon  the  heart-memory  of  those  who  love  her.  Cer- 
tain adjectives  inhere:  the  "classic"  Spoon,  the  "turbid" 
Spoon,  the  "treacherous,"  the  "lovely;"  but  more  significant 
than  these,  and  harking  back  to  an  ancienter  tradition — the 
"raging"  Spoon.  The  women  have  a  saying,  those  old  women 
who  sit  at  windows,  that  every  year  the  river  takes  one  hu- 
man life  as  toll. 

It  lies  in  the  heart  of  that  rich  region  embraced  by  the 
Mississippi  and  the  Illinois  rivers  and  flowing  south  and 
southeast  enters,  after  many  sinuations,  the  latter 
stream.  It  has  measured,  perhaps,  in  its  turnings  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  miles,  and  there  is  evidence  that,  with  the  per- 
verse selection  of  inanimate  things,  it  has  not  disdained 
sometimes  to  change  its  course.  Three  lovely  loops  of  water, 
reached  from  the  southern  end  of  Thompson's  Lake,  known 
as  The  Horseshoes  from  the  physiographic  term  applied  to 
such  formation,  attest  that  years  ago  the  river  approached 
its  point  of  confluence  with  the  Illinois  through  closely  con- 
voluted turns,  reminding  one,  somehow,  of  the  aesthetic  phe- 
nomenon involved  by  certain  musical  endings  wThere  the  stress 
of  the  impetus  is  eased  by  the  crashing  of  conventional 
chords. 

Whatever  dramatic  moment  laid  its  imperative  command 
upon  the  genius  of  the  Spoon  in  that  time  long  past  may  not 
definitely  be  ascertained,  but  less  than  a  score  of  years  ago 
the  sudden  movement  of  a  gigantic  ice-pack,  opposing  exi- 
gence to  indirection — made  a  third  channel  outward  enter- 
ing the  Illinois  farther  to  the  north  by  half  a  mile  and  ap- 
proximating to  what  must  have  been  an  earlier  estuary.  So 
does  the  old  order  forever  change  and  the  will  of  nature,  like 
the  will  of  man,  reverse  the  decision  of  yesterday. 

Although  the  occupation  of  the  Sangamon  and  the  Spoon 
River  valleys  by  people  from  the  east  and  south  was  contem- 


Vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  273 

poraneous,  the  latter  region  would  seem  to  have  offered  su- 
perior inducements,  for  it  lies  in  the  heart  of  what  is  known 
as  the  " Military  Tract."  This  tract  constitutes  all  the  land 
embraced  by  the  Mississippi  and  Illinois  Eivers  as  far 
as  the  northern  line  of  Bureau  and  Henry  counties  and  in- 
cludes a  region  of  great  fertility.  By  an  act  of  Congress 
each  soldier  who  had  participated  in  the  War  of  1812  was 
entitled  to  a  quarter  section  and  as  soon  as  the  provision  was 
made  the  hardier  souls  ventured  thither  to  claim  their  new 
possessions.  Revolutionary  soldiers,  some  of  them.  Men  like 
"John  Wasson": 

Oh!  the  dew-wet  grass  of  the  meadow  in 
North  Carolina 

Through  which  Rebecca  followed  me  wail- 
ing, wailing, 

Lengthening  out  the  farewell  to  me  off  to 
the  war  with  the  British, 

And  then  the  long,  hard  years  down  to  the 
day  at  Yorktown. 

And  then  my  search  for  Rebecca, 

Finding  her  at  last  in  Virginia, 

Two  children  dead  in  the  meanwhile. 

We  went  by  oxen  to  Tennessee, 

Thence  after  years  to  Illinois, 

At  last  to  Spoon  River. 

We  cut  the  buffalo  grass, 

We  felled  the  forests, 

We  built  the  school-houses,  built  the  bridges, 

Leveled  the  roads  and  tilled  the  fields 

Alone  with  poverty,  scourges,  death. . . . 
But  if  they  found  hardship  here  they  found  a  land  offer- 
ing a  hospitality  that  had  not  failed  of  the  appreciation  of 
their  predecessors,  for  the  Indians  from  the  earliest  time 
seem  to  have  shown  a  predilection  for  this  locality.  Al- 
though they  have  not  been  awarded  their  just  dues  at  the 
hands  of  the  state  or  by  its  men  of  science,  and  much  that 
might  constitute  a  source  of  intelligence  and  information 


274  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

regarding  the  prehistoric  inhabitants  of  this  region  has  been 
wasted  through  agrarian  thrift  and  the  wanton  plunder  of 
relic  hunters,  yet  there  are  still  visible  a  number  of  Indian 
mounds  throughout  the  valley  which  the  investigation  of 
archeologlsts  has  shown  to  be  important.  Chapman's  "His- 
tory of  Fulton  County ' '  says : 

There  is  not  a  township  in  the  county  which 
does  not  contain  more  or  less  of  these  traces,  and 
in  some  of  them  are  works  which  in  extent  and  char- 
acter will  compare  with  any  in  the  West. 
On  a  farm  in  Kerton  township,  which  lies  to  the  right 
of  the  mouth  of  Spoon  Eiver,  is  a  field  known  as  Mound 
Field,  containing  about  twenty-five  acres.     It  is  located  on 
the  summit  of  a  high  bluff.    To  quote  again  from  Chapman: 

In  this  field  is  a  level  space  of  five  or  six  acres 
inclosed  by  two  rows  of  circular,  cup-shaped  depres- 
sions, inside  of  which  are  large  mounds  which  must 
originally  have  been  thirty  or  forty  feet  high.  To  the 
south  of  this  level  the  bluff  line  with  its  indentations 
forms  the  border  of  the  field,  and  here  are  the  re- 
mains of  not  less  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand human  beings  buried  literally  by  the  cord! 
Where  the  bluff  begins  to  descend  it  appears  as 
though  a  step  had  been  cut  with  the  bluff  face  not 
less  than  ten  feet  high,  and  here  were  corded  skele- 
tons, laid  as  one  would  cord  wood,  but  with  the  bodies 
arranged  just  as  one  would  preserve  the  level  of 
the  file  best  without  regard  to  direction.  This  burial 
place  follows  the  bluff  line  for  some  distance  where 
skeletons  appear  to  have  been  covered  by  some  light- 
colored  clay  which  must  have  been  brought  from 
considerable  distance,  as  it  is  not  found  in  the  local- 
ity. There  are  also  two  pits  near  the  brow  of  the 
bluff  on  the  side  hill,  which  appear  to  have  been 
originally  about  forty  feet  in  diameter  and  of 
great  depth  and  which  have  been  walled  up  by  plac- 
ing skeletons  around  the  outside  as  one  would  wall 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  275 

a  well,  covering  the  work  with  the  same  clay  as  the 
other  burial  place.  These  skeletons  are  excellently 
preserved,  in  many  places  the  smallest  processes  of 
bone  being  in  as  good  condition  as  though  buried 
a  year  ago.  Over  the  entire  surface  of  the  field — 
which  is  in  cultivation — the  human  hand  cannot  be 
placed  without  putting  it  on  broken  pottery,  bones 
and  shells. 

Passing  up  the  river  one  finds  a  great  mound  near  Sepo, 
observable  from  the  train;  the  Bernadotte  country  furnishes 
interesting  terraces  of  artificial  character;  and  in  the  region 
of  London  Mills  are  several  extensive  earth  works — undoubt- 
edly pre-historic — that  have  received  little  or  no  attention. 
Hereabouts,  too,  is  a  burying  ground  of  the  modern  tribe  of 
Pottawatomi,  and  several  Indian  skeletons  have  been  found 
in  trees. 

Sac,  Fox,  Chippewa,  Kickapoo  and  Pottawatomi,  often 
mere  off-shoots  of  these  nations  and  lacking  tribal  cohe- 
rence, were  found  here  when  the  pioneers  arrived.  The  rich 
bottom  between  California  Bend  on  Spoon  Eiver  and  Liver- 
pool on  the  Illinois  "  constituted, "  says  Dr.  Strode,  of  whom 
I  shall  speak  later,  "almost  one  continuous  camp  site  of  an- 
cient as  well  as  modern  Indians."  The  reason  for  the  great 
popularity  of  this  location  he  thinks  apparent,  for  as  he 
points  out,  "the  river  furnished  fish,  turtle,  water  fowl  and 
fur-bearing  animals;  great  forests  gave  them  game,  nuts, 
honey  and  so  forth;  and  in  every  ravine  were  fine  springs 
of  water."  One  township  further  up  the  river  came  to  be 
known  as  Deerfield  because  it  was  literally  "the  field  of  the 
deer" — the  habitat  of  thousands. 

The  advent  of  the  Frenchman,  though  unfruitful  ot 
much  that  has  made  for  permanence  in  America,  is  still  elo- 
quently reminiscent  in  its  nomenclature.  In  the  valley  of 
the  Spoon,  however,  it  is  nearly  lost.  Maquon,  deriving  from 
a  term  meaning  "big,"  which  is  the  name  they  gave  to  this 
little  river,  and  "Petite,"  one  of  the  tributaries,  are  no  more 
heard;  only  the  lovely  "prairie,"  the  "meadow"  of  our  Eng- 


276  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

lish  tongue,  persists.  "Reeves  Prairie,"  one  hears,  and 
"Toten's  Prairie,"  and  the  names  have  a  pleasant  native 
sound;  but  "Maquon"  first  passed  into  "Mequeen"  before 
an  accident  fastened  its  present  name  upon  it,  and  "Petite" 
has  suffered  a  like  degeneration  and  is  known  upon  the  maps 
as  "Potato  Creek." 

The  legend  that  concerned  itself  with  the  changing  of  the 
river 's  name  is  to  the  effect  that  on  a  day  when  a  great  party 
of  men  were  rafting  on  the  river  a  dinner  had  been  prepared 
beforehand  in  a  great  iron  pot  which  should  serve  to  hold  the 
heat  until  the  noon  hour.  Utensils  were  limited,  and  one  can 
imagine  the  consternation  of  those  hungry  men  when  the 
spoon — the  one  spoon  which  was  to  serve  them  all — was  some- 
how dropped  overboard.  From  that  small  perversity  of  fate 
the  river's  name  was  changed  and  it  is  not  the  least  of  the 
amusing  incidents  that  have  changed  the  face  of  history. 
One  feels  instinctively  that  there  never  would  have  been  a 
"Maquon  Anthology".  How  much,  one  comes  to  wonder, 
how  much  of  destiny  is  hazard? 

The  migrations  of  the  pioneers,  like  those  of  the  Indians, 
tended  always  to  follow  watercourses  and  progress  was 
marked  by  the  erection  of  mills.  Sawmills  and  mills  for  the 
grinding  of  grist  were  established  all  along  the  Spoon  in  the 
decade  denoted  by  the  twenties,  the  last  to  be  erected  repre- 
senting always  the  farthest  outpost  of  civilization.  At  Water- 
ford,  Duncan  Mills,  Bernadotte,  Ellisville,  Seville  and  London 
Mills  the  turning  of  the  great  wheels  performed  enormous 
labors  and  served  as  social  nuclei  around  which  towns  in- 
variably were  built.  Some  of  those  mills  still  stand,  though 
fallen  into  decay,  and  always  the  riffles  in  the  stream  establish 
hypothetically  their  location.  Not  only  was  the  operation  of 
a  mill  a  thriving  business  in  that  early  day  but  the  capital  re- 
quired for  its  establishment  argued  a  man  of  substance.  The 
miller  was  usually  the  wealthy  man  of  his  community ;  one  of 
considerable  influence,  and  if,  indeed,  success  came  late  for 
the  gratification  of  his  own  ambitions,  he  might  still  hope  for 
their  fulfillment  through  the  greater  opportunities  which  his 


vol.  xiv.  NOB.  3-4        ^he  Spoon  River  Country  277 

wealth  would  give  to  his  boys  and  girls ;  nor,  in  the  case  of 
' '  Oak  Tutts ', ' '  father  does  one  feel  these  aspirations  to  have 
been  touched  with  the  ignoble : 

My  mother  was  for  women's  rights 

And  my  father  was  the  rich  miller  of  Lon- 
don Mills. 

I  dreamed  of  the  wrongs  of  the  world  and 
wanted  to  right  them. 

When  my  father  died  I  set  out  to  see  peoples 
and  countries 

In  order  to  learn  how  to  reform  the  world. 

I  traveled  through  many  lands. 

I  saw  the  ruins  of  Eome, 

And  the  ruins  of  Athens, 

And  the  ruins  of  Thebes. 

And  I  sat  by  moonlight  amid  the  necropolis 
of  Memphis. 

There  I  was  caught  up  by  wings  of  flame, 

And  a  voice  from  heaven  said  to  me: 

"  Injustice,  Untruth  destroyed  them.      Go 
forth! 

Preach  justice!     Preach  truth!" 

And  I  hastened  back  to  Spoon  River 

To  say  farewell  to  my  mother  before  be- 
ginning my  work. 

But  see  how  the  Nemesis  of  fanaticism  finds  out  this  vil- 
lage Hamlet,  for: 

They  all  saw  a  strange  light  in  my  eye. 

And  by  and  by,  when  I  talked,   they   dis- 
covered 

What  had  come  into  my  mind. 

Then  Jonathan  Swift  Somers  challenged  me 
to  debate 

The  subject  (I  taking  the  negative) ; 

"Pontius   Pilot,   the  Greatest  Philosopher 
of  the  World". 

And  he  won  the  debate  by  saying  at  last, 


278  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

"Before  you  reform  the  world,  Mr.  Tutt, 
Please  answer  the  question  of  Pontius  Pilate ; 
'What  is  truth?'  " 

London  Mills  is  the  northermost  town  of  what  we  have 
chosen  to  designate  as  the  Spoon  River  Country.  It  lies  in  a 
bend  of  the  river  whose  bank  is  so  thickly  wooded  that  it 
seems  a  great  green  arm  about  the  thriving  little  town.  The 
trees  of  London  Mills,  like  all  those  in  this  bottom,  make  a 
marvelously  luxuriant  growth,  and  stand  about  the  lawns  and 
streets  with  all  the  dignity  that  a  forest  heritage  bestows. 
Across  the  river  from  the  town  I  particularly  recall  one  giant 
elm,  conveying  by  its  prodigious  height,  the  great  reach  of  its 
extended  arms  and  the  enormous  thickness  of  its  trunk  such 
a  look  of  power  and  significance  that  it  seemed  the  number 
of  its  centuries  alone  could  not  account  for  its  "eternal  look", 
the  sense  of  history  it  conferred  upon  the  landscape ;  one  felt 
it  to  be  "part  of  and  related  to  a  mighty  past",  linked  with 
great  destinies  and  high  emprise.  It  is  in  the  nature  of  elms 
to  seem  to  wait  but  this  great  patriarch,  bearing  within  it  stir- 
ring memories  of  the  past,  must  find  it  long,  with  only  the 
vagrancies  of  fishermen,  the  whispering  of  lovers  and  the 
small  business  of  the  nesting  birds,  patiently  to  bide  its  hour. 

Following  down  the  stream  from  London  Mills,  passing 
Ellisville,  Babylon  and  Seville,  slipping  between  the  terraced 
hills  that  rim  the  river  on  the  right  and  the  mani-patterned 
grain-fields  on  the  left,  one  comes  to  Bernadotte. 

At  Bernadotte  one  lingers  with  delight,  for  here  one 
savors  in  the  little  drowsing  town,  so  obviously  fallen  upon 
the  period  of  its  decline,  remote  in  time  and  place  from  the 
bustling  life  around  her,  "an  aroma,  as  from  wine  that  has 
been  many  years  in  bottle."  Perhaps  because  her  tragedy 
is  the  tragedy  of  arrested  growth  one  senses  here  more  keenly 
than  at  any  other  place  along  the  river  the  spirit  of  the  pio- 
neers whose  ambrotypes  "Eutherford  McDowell"  used  to 

enlarge.        Men  who  were  .    ,    . 

m  being 

When  giant  hands  from  the  womb  of  the  world 
Tore  the  republic. 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  279 

William  Walters,  who  was  the  first  settler  of  Bernadotte 
township,  arrived  in  1826.  Within  five  years  three  mills  were 
built  along  the  Spoon  in  close  proximity,  suggesting  the  feas- 
ability  of  platting  off  a  town.  It  is  said  that  Mr.  Walters 
bought  the  present  town-site  of  Bernadotte  for  fifty  deer 
skins,  but  this  was,  by  no  means,  his  most  important  trans- 
action with  the  Indians  for,  though  they  were  fairly  treated 
by  the  whites,  their  pilfering,  their  restlessness,  and  the  lurk- 
ing spirit  of  treachery  they  betrayed  made  them  dangerous 
neighbors  in  the  end,  and  their  expulsion  became  a  matter  of 
necessity.  It  was  in  the  curve  of  the  river  just  above  Berna- 
dotte known  as  Great  Bend  that  they  were  finally  rounded 
up  by  the  whites  under  the  informal  but  efficient  captaincy  of 
Mr.  Walters,  driven  across  the  state,  across  the  Mississippi 
at  the  point  then  known  as  Yellow  Banks,  the  present  site  of 
Oquawka  and  bidden  never  to  return. 

For  many  years  Bernadotte  throve  mightily,  for  not  only 
was  she  situated  in  the  heart  of  a  rich  farming  district  but 
the  timber  on  her  surrounding  hills,  the  limestone  under  them, 
her  fishing  industry,  her  two  packing  houses  and  many  other 
small,  thriving  enterprises  gave  her  a  commercial  life  that 
promised  well.  Furthermore  the  natural  beauty  of  her  situ- 
ation upon  the  river,  surrounded  by  her  seven  verdant  hills 
made  her  a  pleasure  place  for  all  the  neighboring  towns,  and 
visitors  came  to  her  by  hundreds  on  holidays  and  Sundays 
through  the  summer. 

It  was  the  coming  of  the  railroad  through  the  country 
that  worked  her  ruin.  For  her  situation,  which  had  been  to 
her  advantage  when  the  river  was  the  chief  means  of  trans- 
portation, now  proved  to  be  her  undoing  and  her  prosperity 
passed  to  the  towns  that  were  more  fortunate. 

These  were  the  thorough-going  days  when  the  life  of 
trade  was  sustained  by  its  own  resources  and  the  last  monu- 
ment to  this  period,  perhaps,  passed  with  the  tearing  down  of 
the  old  covered  bridge  a  few  years  ago.  This  bridge,  which 
spanned  the  Spoon,  was  put  up  entirely  without  the  use  of 
steel  or  iron.  The  stone  for  the  abutments  was  quarried 


280  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J.  I.  s.  H.  s. 

from  the  vicinity ;  the  selected  timber  that  went  to  the  making 
of  the  superstructure  was  brought  from  the  woods  near  by 
having  been  hewed  into  shape  where  it  fell;  wooden  pins 
bound  together  the  remarkable  trusses.  A  thorough-going 
bridge,  I  say,  that  stood  for  seventy  years  and  might  have 
stood  for  seventy  more  had  not  the  spirit  of  the  times — that 
strange  haunter  of  men — searched  out  even  this  quiet  place 
and  demanded  fresh  tribute,  this  time  of  concrete  and  steel 
and  iron. 

The  old  mill  which  still  stands  has  lately  been  put  into 
repair  and  is  now  in  operation.  Above  it  looms  the  hill, 
Mount  Pleasant,  which  commands  the  town  and  between  them 
is  the  ancient  hostelry  that  has  served  the  village  for  so  many 
years.  Together  they  form  the  background  for  that  figure 
touched  with  pathos  and  with  dignity,  "Isaiah  Beethoven": 

They  told  me  I  had  three  months  to  live, 

So  I  crept  to  Bernadotte, 

And  sat  by  the  mill  for  hours  and  hours 

Where  the  gathered  waters  deeply  moving 

Seem  not  to  move : 

0  world,  that 's  you ! 

"Y  ou  are  but  a  widened  place  in  the  river 

Where  life  looks  down  and  we  rejoice  for  her 

Mirrored  in  us,  and  so  we  dream 

And  turn  away,  but  when  again 

We  look  for  the  face,  behold  the  low-lands 

And  blasted  cotton-wood    trees   where   we 

empty 

Into  the  larger  stream! 
But  here  by  the  mill  the  castled  clouds 
Mocked  themselves  in  the  dizzy  water ; 
And  over  its  agate  floor  at  night 
The  flame  of  the  moon  ran  under  my  eyes 
Amid  a  forest  stillness  broken 
By  a  flute  in  a  hut  on  the  hill. 
At  last  when  I  came  to  lie  in  bed 
Weak  and  in  pain,  with  dreams  about  me, 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  281 

The  soul  of  the  river  entered  my  soul, 
And  the  gathered  power   of   my   soul   was 

moving 

So  swiftly  it  seemed  to  be  at  rest 
Under  cities  of  cloud  and  under 
Spheres  of  silver  and  changing  worlds — 
Until  I  saw  a  flash  of  trumpets 
Above  the  battlements  of  Time !    . 

Mrs.  Maude  McCaughey,  a  fine  intelligent  women  who 
has  kept  the  hotel  for  many  years,  who  is  familiar  with  the 
"Anthology"  and  many  of  its  characters,  assures  me  that  she 
never  had  a  guest  of  that  strange  name.  No  one  in  the  vil- 
lage had  heard  of  Isaiah  Beethoven;  but  I  who  have  sat  for 
hours  by  the  mill  where  the  "gathered  waters,  deeply  mov- 
ing seem  not  to  move,"  and  have  lain  in  that  chaste  room 
whose  hand-woven  carpet  and  woolen  quilt  evoke  the  memory 
of  another  day  and  heard  the  water  falling  over  the  dam  all 
through  the  quiet  night — I  protest  that  verisimilitude  begets 
a  strange  conviction! 

Bernadotte  was  until  recent  years  the  home  of  Dr.  Wil- 
liam Strode,  who  is  the  "William  Jones"  of  the  "Anthol- 
ogy." Here,  in  the  old  square  house  upon  the  river  bank, 
he  got  together  those  amazing  collections  and  compiled  the 
data  deduced  from  his  tireless  researches  in  the  fields  of 
ornithology,  conchology  and  zoology  in  general.  How  it  was 
possible  despite  the  demands  of  his  profession — and  to  add 
to  this,  the  demands  of  a  large  and  growing  family — to  satisfy 
his  scientific  instincts  and  enthusiasms;  to  attend  to  his 
large  correspondence,  that  "converse  afar  with  the  great;" 
for  those  many  contributions  to  scientific  journals;  for  lec- 
tures ;  for  every  public  enterprise  that  claimed  his  sympathy 
and  co-operation — all  this  is  well  nigh  inconceivable.  A 
glance  at  the  list  of  his  collections  fills  one  with  astonish- 
ment :  Mounted  birds,  225 ;  scientific  bird  skins,  500 ;  fresh 
water  clams  or  niads,  550  species;  fresh  water  univalves, 
400;  and  these  are  but  the  outstanding  classifications. 


282  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- l- s- H- s- 

Dr.  Strode 's  work  in  classifying  the  mussels  of  Spoon 
Eiver  is  of  considerable  service,  for  here  are  found  the  larg- 
est and  finest  fresh-water  clams  in  the  world,  the  unionidoae, 
or  niads,  having  sometimes  been  found  to  measure  nine  and 
a  half  inches  in  length  and  to  weigh  nearly  three  pounds.  In 
recognition  of  his  work  in  this  particular  field  the  United 
States  National  Museum  has  done  him  the  honor  to  name  a 
species  of  fresh-water  mussel  for  him — the  Pleurobema  Stro- 
diana.  The  Strodiana  is  about  the  size  of  half  of  an  English 
walnut  and  has  a  beautiful  amber  colored  shell  with  some 
striated  lines  running  through  it. 

Some  years  ago  Dr.  Strode  sent  a  consignment  of  shells 
to  France.  By  comparison  with  the  depauperate  species 
found  in  European  countries  these  mussels  must  have  caused 
considerable  astonishment,  for  the  curator  of  one  museum 
wrote  him  with  delightful  hyperbole  that  his  native  city  of 
Bonn  "was  but  a  small  walled  town"  and  that  he  feared  he 
would  not  be  able  to  get  them  into  it. 

An  hour  with  this  wizard  of  the  Spoon  spent  among  his 
mussel  shells  is  something  to  remember.  There  is  a  story  I 
have  heard  of  a  visit  which  the  poet-naturalist  Ernest  Mc- 
Gaffy  once  made  with  him  to  one  of  these  great  clam  beds; 
of  Dr.  Strode,  his  sleeves  pushed  up  to  his  arm-pits,  his  legs 
incased  in  rubber  waders,  standing  for  an  hour  or  more  in 
the  stream,  tossing  out  one  shell  after  another,  fitting  each 
with  its  scientific  name  and  discoursing  familiarly  on  the 
subject  all  the  time.  It  was  probably  under  the  impulse  of 
the  astonished  admiration  evoked  by  this  and  similar  ex- 
periences that  the  poet  was  moved  to  write  on  the  fly-leaf  of 
the  copy  of  his  "Poems  of  Gun  and  Bod"  which  he  presented 
to  his  friend :  "  To  Dr.  Strode,  whose  knowledge  of  nature  is 
so  comprehensive  and  various  that  the  little  I  have  learned 
seems  nothing  in  comparison." 

The  correspondence  of  this  modest,  almost  retiring  citi- 
zen of  Bernadotte,  and  later  of  Lewistown,  brought  the  world 
strangely  close  to  this  remote  community,  establishing  with 
points  far  and  wide  invisible  lines  of  communication  and 


MARGARET  GEORGE. 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  283 

many  a  foreign  postmark  came  to  mingle  its  almost  inde- 
cipherable legend  with  * '  the  stamp  of  Spoon  River. ' '  In  this 
house  was  entertained,  betimes,  the  "County  Scientific  As- 
sociation" to  which  "  Perry  Qoll"  so  ardently  desired  admis- 
sion before  his 

little  brochure 

On  the  intelligence  of  plants 

Began  to  attract  attention. 

and  an  atmosphere  more  native  to  its  interests  scarcely 
could  have  been  found.  I  could  find  no  history  of  Perry 
Qoll,  but  a  certain  highly  intelligent  farmer  in  that  commu- 
nity by  the  name  of  Henry  Qoll  is  well  remembered.  Whether 
or  not  he  ever  applied  for  membership  in  that  organization, 
it  is  remembered  that  he  was  its  occasional  host.  He  used, 
also,  to  operate  a  little  steamer  on  the  river — an  excursion 
boat  designed  to  serve  the  pleasure  seekers  who  came  to  Ber- 
nadotte  in  the  summer  time.  His  character  doubtless  offered 
a  suggestion  to  the  creative  mind  of  Masters. 

But  other  interests  than  those  of  science  were  served 
in  the  hospitable  home  of  the  Strodes.  The  mistress  of  the 
house,  by  her  deep  and  intelligent  interest  in  letters  and 
ideas,  and  by  the  charm  and  magnetism  of  her  personality, 
drew  about  her  a  group  of  writers  and  thinkers  who  already 
were  beginning  to  find  their  way  into  the  literature  of 
the  day.  Edgar  Lee  Masters  and  his  sister  Madeline; 
Margaret  George,  whose  verse  was  appearing  in  such  maga- 
zines as  The  Century,  Lippincott's,  The  Atlantic  Monthly; 
W.  T.  Davidson,  editor  of  the  "Fulton  Democrat,"  published 
at  Lewistown,  a  lecturer  and  writer  known  all  over  the  state ; 
that  "Reverend  Abner  Peet"  whose  trunk  containing  "the 
manuscript  of  a  lifetime  of  sermons"  suffered  such  ruth- 
less destruction  at  the  hands  of  "Burchard  the  grog-keeper," 
the  Reverend  Stephen  Peet,  in  fact,  a  man  of  much  distinc- 
tion, editor  of  "The  American  Antiquarian  and  Oriental 
Magazine";  Ernest  McGaffy  and  his  wife,  and  many  others. 
Mrs.  Strode,  herself  a  writer,  was  even  during  those  busy 
years  contributing  to  such  magazines  as  "The  Youth's  Com- 


284  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

panion"  and  "The  Boston  Educator,"  and  a  more  ambitious 
enterprise  was  under  way.  One  glimpses  a  social  and  intel- 
lectual preoccupation  that  must  have  been  surprisingly  in- 
spiring. 

But  lest  the  associations  of  Bernadotte  leave  us  heavy 
it  is  well  to  recall  that  from  the  country  hereabouts  that 
"rugged  nurse"  the  soil  has  produced  many  characters  un- 
trammeled  by  a  too  great  rennement.  There  was,  for  in- 
stance, that  great  bully  of  "The  Spooniad" — 

hog-eyed  Allen,  terror  of  the  hills, 

That  looked  on  Bernadotte 

No  man  of  this  degenerate  day  could  lift 
The  boulder  which  he  threw,  and  when  he 

spoke 

The  windows  rattled,  and  beneath  his  brows, 
Thatched  like  a  shed  with  bristling  hairs  of 

black, 

His  small  eyes  glistened  like  a  maddened 
boar. 

As  he  walked  the  boards  creaked,  as 
he  talked 

A  song  of  menace  rumbled. 
Yes,  there  were  lusty  spirits  in  the  Valley  of  the  Spoon! 

III. 

OLD  LEWISTOWN. 

Lewistown,  the  first  town  to  be  established  in  Fulton 
County,  was  just  turning  its  half  century  when  there  came 
to  bide  within  its  gates  that  small  uneasy  guest — a  child  who 
wondered.  What  his  welcome  would  have  been  had  the  citi- 
zens of  this  place  had  intimation  of  his  brooding  genius  is 
an  interesting  point  of  speculation,  for  although  the  distinc- 
tion which  the  author  of  the  "Anthology"  conferred  upon  the 
town  is  indubitable,  yet  by  its  publication  it  cannot  be  de- 
nied that,  like  "Percival  Sharp,"  he  "stirred  certain  vibra- 
tions in  Spoon  Eiver."  The  plaint  of  "Zarathustra,"  "The 


Vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  285 

poets  lie  too  much,"  has  found  its  echo  here  in  sad  reversal. 

Mr.  Masters  has  told  us  that  he  was  twelve  years  of  age 
when  he  came  to  Lewistown,  and  ten  years  of  his  life  were 
lived  here,  but  whether  the  two  hundred  and  fourteen  char- 
acters that  went  to  the  creation  of  the  book  which  was  to 
herald  him  to  fame  some  twenty-three  years  after  his  de- 
parture from  the  town,  were  the  result  of  conscious  memory 
or  merely  of  "that  inward  shaping  force"  which  psycho- 
logists tell  us  is  the  tenure  of  the  formative  period,  one 
feels  that  these  were  years  of  tremendous  significance;  that 
the  moment  that  compassed  the  awakening  of  his  intel- 
lectual and  of  his  sense  life,  in  a  community  somewhat  alien 
to  him,  was  precisely  that  which  the  virginal  curiosity  of  the 
child  and  the  dream  power  of  the  poet  should  convert  to 
the  ends  of  art.  These  years  that  were  filled  with  wonder 
and  speculation;  with  Burns  and  Poe  and  Keats  and  Shelly; 
with  the  infinite  pains  and  experimentation  that  produced 
four  hundred  poems — these  years  gave  him,  if  nothing  else 
as  net  result,  that  most  delicate  of  all  the  materials  of 
genius,  the  very  corner  stone  of  his  abounding  fame,  the 
idiom  of  a  people. 

Though  the  spectacle  that  inspired  the  "Anthology" 
grew  out  of  the  small  trade  and  petty  enterprise  of  those  lean 
years  following  the  Civil  War,  the  poet  has  paid  tribute  to 
the  pioneers  and  to  that  stalwart  generation  following  them 
as  the  epitaphs  of  "Judge  Somers,"  "Washington  Mc- 
Neely,"  "Herndon"  and  many  others  show;  and  no  poet 
that  America  has  produced,  not  even  excepting  Whitman, 
has  voiced  so  constantly  a  sense  of  the  pageantry  which  an 
intimate  knowledge  of  her  history  inspires. 

The  period  of  Masters  was  contemporaneous  with  the 
third  generation  in  the  life  of  Lewistown — the  shirt-sleeve 
period  if  you  will.  It  was  his  good  fortune  to  arrive  upon 
a  time  rich  in  anecdote  and  through  this  medium  he  came  to 
an  amazingly  intimate  comprehension  of  its  historic  back- 
ground. His  association  with  the  people  of  the  town  and 
country  in  his  school  and  social  life,  his  knowledge  of  the 


286  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

petty  political  intrigues — the  scandals  of  the  court-house 
circle — which  his  father's  position  as  one  of  the  leading 
lawyers  of  the  town  opened  to  him,  gave  him  the  immediate 
present;  and  the  many  intervening  years  between  the  inci- 
dents that  concern  the  lives  of  his  characters  and  the  "mo- 
ment of  invention"  proved,  no  doubt,  that  very  important 
period  of  transition  involving  the  phenomenon  familiar  in 
all  creative  work — the  translation  of  the  concrete  into  terms' 
of  the  abstract,  and  back  again,  through  the  medium  of  art 
to  the  concrete.  A  process  implying  a  little  loss  compen- 
sated by  an  enormous  gain;  a  rediscovery  of  incident 
touched  only  with  significance;  a  fealty  that  concerns  itself 
with  life,  rather  than  with  fact. 

In  all  essential  ways  the  characters  of  the  "Anthology" 
are  re-created.  It  is  true  that  nearly  all  of  those  two  hun- 
dred and  fourteen  names  in  the  table  of  contents — the  in- 
vention of  which  has  elicited  the  astonished  admiration  of 
his  critics — may  be  found  on  the  tombstones,  in  the  tele- 
phone books,  and  on  topographical  maps  of  the  Spoon  Biver 
country,  but  with  the  exception  of  perhaps  a  scant  dozen, 
they  are  names  re-assembled,  re-created  in  composite  like 
the  characters  they  represent.  The  psychology  involving 
the  relation  of  a  name  to  the  personality  denoted  by  it  is 
not  yet  fully  comprehended,  but  almost  everyone  has  felt 
the  matter  to  have,  significance.  George  Moore  once  pointed 
out  that  all  lyric  poets  have  beautiful  names — names  abound- 
ing in  vowels  and  liquids — Alfred  Tennyson,  Charles  Alger- 
non Swinburne,  Dante,  Gabriel  Eosetti;  but  Thackery! 
Thackery  is  of  course  a  novelist  inspired  by  the  acrid  spirit 
of  the  ironic — a  satirist  by  the  very  force  of  his  name.  A 
whimsey  of  course,  but  an  idea  opening  a  field  of  specula- 
tion that  is  not  without  its  importance.  It  was  his  theory  that 
a  man's  work  proceeds  from  his  name. 

Apparently  to  Mr.  Masters  names  have  stood,  first  of 
all,  for  locality,  but  no  fixed  method  of  characterization  is 
discernable.  Sometime  by  the  substitution  of  a  single  let- 
ter or  by  the  transposition  of  one,  a  character  true  both  to 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  287 

fact  and  life  seems  clearly  indicated;  sometimes  by  the  com- 
bination of  a  distinctive  Christian  name  and  a  surname  two 
characters  will  appear  to  be  suggested  and  again,  by  an  allu- 
sion to  some  apparently  unimportant  incident — a  cage  of 
canaries  or  a  cedar  tree  on  the  lawn — the  identity  of  the  char- 
acter involved  will,  to  those  long  familiar  with  the  town, 
seem  to  be  implied. 

All  such  "identifications"  are  confusing  and,  for  the 
most  part,  misleading.  Excepting  a  very  limited  number  of 
characters,  only  suggestions  have  been  furnished  by  the  peo- 
ple of  Spoon  Eiver — suggestions  from  which  the  creative 
mind  of  the  poet  has  evolved  a  community  so  genuine  and 
so  significant  that  "Spoon  Eiver"  has  been  said  to  trans- 
cend locality  and  to  belong  to  the  very  "Comedie  Humaine" 
of  life  itself. 

It  is,  perhaps,  because  the  "Anthology"  is  so  intensely 
local  that  it  may  claim  to  be  so  largely  universal,  reminding 
one  of  that  paradox  of  Masters'  applied  to  Lincoln  in  his 
"Autochthon" 

0  great  patrician,  therefore  fit  to  be 
Great  democrat  as  well! 

The  people  of  Spoon  River  have,  by  inadvertence,  paid 
tribute  to  Mr.  Masters'  authenticity  of  vision  by  their 
prompt  and  sometimes  resentful  recognition  of  the  personnel 
of  his  book.  One  is  reminded  of  the  situation  in  which 
Charles  Dickens  found  himself  after  having  projected  his 
Yorkshire  schoolmaster — Mr.  Squeers — upon  the  pages  of  his 
"Nicholas  Nickelby."  Mr.  Squeers  was,  in  fact,  a  creature 
made  from  scraps  of  memory;  from  impressions  received 
when — and  here  the  analogy  continues — he  was  a  "not  very 
robust  child,  sitting  in  by-places, ' '  and  synthesized  into  a  type 
— but  a  type  so  telling  that  more  than  one  Yorkshire  school- 
master laid  claim  to  being  the  original.  One  even  consulted  a 
solicitor  as  to  the  grounds  on  which  he  might  obtain  redress, 
as  if  he  coveted  the  honor  of  establishing  in  that  way  the 
association  with  his  name  of  the  ignorance  and  brutal  cu- 
pidity for  which  that  character  is  synonym. 


288  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

Such  a  predicament,  though  embarrassing,  is,  in  a  sense, 
the  highest  praise.  Mr.  Masters'  small  town  is — the  average 
small  town.  His  studies  include  ten  or  twelve  social  groups, 
two  doctors,  half  a  dozen  lawyers,  ten  or  twelve  politicians, 
two  editors,  two  bankers,  several  poets,  artists  and  fiddlers, 
four  preachers,  seven  prostitutes,  two  nymphomaniacs  and 
a  scattering  of  hypermorons  beside  the  great  number  of 
characters  not  lending  themselves  readily  to  classification. 
An  average  grouping  perhaps  for  a  town  of  twenty-five 
hundred. 

It  is  unfortunate  for  the  fair  name  of  Lewistown  that 
the  untutored  mind  is  prone  to  oversensitiveness  in  the  con- 
templation of  morbid  psychology.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
such  a  character  as  "Henry  Wilmans"  infinitely  outweighs 
in  its  impressiveness  a  half  dozen  such  characters  as 
"Thomas  Trevelyan,"  "William  and  Emily,"  and  "Aaron 
Hatfield."  Even  so  unprovincial  a  critic  as  Miss  Lowell  has 
been  impelled  to  wonder  "if  life  in  our  little  Western  cities 
is  as  bad  as  this  why  everyone  does  not  commit  suicide." 
"Spoon  River,"  she  declares,  "is  one  long  chronicle  of  rapes, 
seductions,  liasons  and  perversions,"  and  gravely  adds  that 
"it  is  a  great  blot  upon  Mr.  Masters'  work.  It  is  an  obliquity 
of  vision,  a  morbidness  of  mind  which  distorts  an  otherwise 
remarkable  picture. ' ' 

That  Miss  Lowell  believed  herself  to  be  discussing 
"Hanover,  Illinois,"  absolves  her  from  imputation  of 
personal  malice,  but  a  careful  scrutiny  of  the  matter 
reveals  not  more  than  sixty-five  out  of  the  two  hundred 
and  fourteen  characters  in  the  book  to  be,  according  to 
Shavian  classification,  "unpleasant."  Mr.  Masters  is,  with- 
out doubt,  in  the  "Anthology"  as  in  his  later  books,  pre- 
occupied with  pathology,  but  sixty-five  out  of  two  hundred 
and  fourteen  does  not,  perhaps,  represent  a  ratio  dispropor- 
tionate to  the  conditions  of  life  itself — and  more  than  with 
pathology,  Mr.  Masters  is  preoccupied  with  Life. 

Lewistown  by  no  means  predisposes  to  suicide.  Its 
streets  are  tree-embowered  and  "wonderful  for  grass."  Its 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  289 

business  houses  are  ranged  about  the  square,  in  the  center 
of  which  stands  the  courthouse.  A  fountain  splashes  in  a 
park  near  by,  and  here  and  there  about  the  town  stand  the 
dignified  old  mansions  of  that  steadfast  second  generation 
that  had  its  share — and  that  no  mean  one — in  shaping  the  des- 
tiny of  the  nation  in  the  moment  of  her  greatest  peril.  Beach- 
ing out  from  it  toward  the  east  and  south  and  west  are 
stretches  of  lovely  hill  country  declining  gently  towards  the 
valleys  of  the  Spoon  and  the  Illinois ;  while  to  the  north  are 
great  expanses  of  prairie,  those  fertile  farmlands,  ''fair  as 
the  garden  of  the  Lord."  Decidedly,  Lewistown  does  not 
predispose  to  suicide. 

If  a  town,  like  an  institution,  is  "the  lengthened  shadow 
of  a  man ' '  then  Lewistown  may  be  said  to  measure  the  moral 
stature  of  Ossian  M.  Boss.  He  was  the  first  soldier  of  the 
War  of  1812  to  claim  his  quarter  section  in  the  Military  Tract, 
but  he  was  not  the  first  adventurer  into  this  promised  land.  He 
found  there  before  him  a  certain  John  Eveland  located  upon 
the  banks  of  Spoon  Biver  and  he,  in  turn,  had  been  preceded 
by  a  figure  so  vague  in  outline  as  to  be  almost  legendary:  a 
Dr.  Davison,  a  recluse  and  misanthrope  whose  one  desire  was 
to  be  alone;  a  man  of  considerable  culture  as  his  speech  and 
the  refinements  of  his  cabin  showed.  He  lingered  only  a  little 
while  after  the  influx  of  people  from  the  East  began,  moving 
to  the  Starved  Bock  country,  where,  eventually,  he  died.  So 
romantic  and  mysterious  a  figure  he  seemed,  so  strangely 
touched  with  tragedy  that  Mr.  W.  T.  Davidson  wrote  a  novel 
founded  on  his  character,  called  "The  Hermit".  He  pub- 
lished the  story  in  his  paper  the  Fulton  Democrat,  and  within 
the  present  year,  his  daughters  who  have  continued  the  paper 
since  his  death,  at  the  instance  of  a  number  of  the  "faithful 
readers ' '  have  run  it  again  in  its  columns.  Strangely  enough 
an  accident  has  discovered  to  them,  within  the  last  few 
months,  that  the  purely  conjectural  hypothesis  upon  which 
Mr.  Davidson  based  the  hegira  of  his  hero  to  the  land  of 
wilderness — a  tragedy  of  his  love  life — was  correct. 


290  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

The  tale  is  chiefly  valuable  as  a  commentary  upon  the  life 
and  manners  of  that  early  day.  A  description  of  Dr.  Davi- 
son's  ascent  of  the  Spoon  may  be  of  interest  here  and  taken 
as  a  fairly  faithful  picture  of  that  wilding  stream.  It  must 
be  remembered  that  Editor  Davidson  was  writing  in  the 
splendid  adjectiverous  nineties. 

'  *  The  sun  was  going  down  on  a  delicious  summer 
day — going  down  beneath  an  enchanted  western  forest  of 
giant  oaks,  elms,  sycamores  and  walnuts.  The  eastern 
shore  of  the  river  was  hills  and  sand ;  a  little  way  above 
an  emerald  isle  (the  little  detached  strip  of  land  that  is 
called  Cuba)  on  the  west,  and  beneath  the  arches  of  great 
trees  a  smaller  clear  shining  river. 

"  'It  is  the  River  Mequeen',  and  the  doctor  stood  up 
hat  in  hand ;  and  bowing  low  he  gently  said,  '  My  queen ! ' 
"But  four  oars  swept  the  boat  forward  swiftly,  con- 
stantly, round  the  bends  of  beautiful  clear  water;  the 
pebbles  many  feet  below  were  plainly  seen;  the  water 
seemed  full  of  fish;  at  every  turn  there  was  something 
new  to  admire.  The  glistening  white  sandbanks;  the  great 
trees  drooping  over  the  silvery  stream  as  though  to  pro- 
tect and  bless  it;  through  forest  aisles  an  occasional 
glimpse  of  the  gorgeous  prairies  to  the  east  or  the  bold 
and  glorious  hills  to  the  south  and  west — the  almost 
deafening  chorus  of  the  birds !  There  were  no  vandals 
to  shoot  or  stone  them  in  those  days.  Every  tree  was 
a  song-bird's  home.  They  passed  many  herds  of  red 
deer  and  turkey." 

This  description,  barring  the  deer  and  turkey,  and  possi- 
bly the  clearness  of  the  water — for  the  Spoon  takes  toll  of 
many  farm  lands — is  quite  as  true  now  as  then,  though  no 
mention  is  made  of  the  luxuriant  growth  of  vines  that  give 
the  river  an  almost  tropical  aspect.  The  place  is  still  a  para- 
dise for  birds :  cardinals,  orioles  and  prothonotory  warblers 
flash  their  gold  and  crimson  back  and  forth  across  the  stream ; 
the  red-winged  blackbird  flaunts  his  brilliant  shoulders  from 
the  topmost  branch;  the  tanager,  that  velvet  miracle,  flits 
from  spray  to  spray  of  overhanging  bough,  holding  you  fast 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  291 

with  the  tantalizing  seduction  of  his  black  and  scarlet.    Many 
curves  of  the  river  hold  in  a  close  embrace  timbered  thickets 
so  dense  with  vine  and  implicated  undergrowth — the  haunt 
of  bats  and  owls  and  creeping  things — that  they  seem  to  offer 
the  challenge  of  the  "  Woods  of  Westermain", 
Enter  these  enchanted  woods 
You  who  dare ! 

Ossian  M.  Ross  came  to  Illinois  from  Seneca,  New  York, 
in  1820.  He  brought  with  him,  besides  his  family — a  wife 
and  three  children — a  blacksmith,  a  carpenter,  a  shoemaker 
and  several  other  workmen  and  their  families.  His  first  pause 
was  at  Alton  on  the  Mississippi  but  after  a  year  spent  at  that 
place  he  decided  to  push  on  toward  the  ultimate  objective, 
followed  the  Mississippi  northward  to  the  Illinois,  ascended 
that  river  as  far  as  the  mouth  of  the  Spoon,  and  penetrated 
inland  on  the  waters  of  that  stream  to  a  point  adjacent  to  the 
section  to  which  he  was  entitled  in  the  " bounty  lands'*. 

Mr.  Harvey  Ross,  a  son  of  Ossian  Ross,  who  published  in 
his  declining  years  a  book  called  "The  Early  Pioneers  and 
Pioneer  Events  of  the  State  of  Illinois"  has  written  with  de- 
lightful attention  to  the  importance  of  minutiae: 

"My  father  on  examining  his  map  found  that  his  land 
was  about  six  miles  north  of  Mr.  Eveland 's  place.  He 
took  some  of  his  men,  and  with  his  compass,  chain  and 
field  notes  had  no  trouble  in  locating  his  land.  Father 
selected  the  quarter  section  north  of  Lewistown  for  our 
home,  and  built  a  log  house  on  the  north  side  of  a  little 
creek  that  ran  through  the  land,  and  near  a  fine  clear 
spring  of  water.  The  location  was  sixty  rods  northeast 
from  Major  Walker's  present  residence." 
Writing  of  Mr.  Eveland,  who  was  the  first  to  welcome 
them  to  the  country,  and  incidentally  glimpsing  the  crudity 
and  hardship  of  these  early  days,  he  says : 

"Mr.  Eveland  had  a  large  family  of  ten  or  twelve 
children,  part  of  them  grown.  They  had  some  twenty 
acres  in  cultivation,  and  were  engaged  in  raising  stock. 
They  had  come  into  this  country  from  Calhoun  county, 


292  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

making  the  trip  up  the  Illinois  and  Spoon  Eiver  partly 
by  land  and  partly  by  water.  Before  leaving  Calhoun 
county  they  constructed  a  pirogue  (a  large  canoe).  It 
was  hewed  out  of  a  cottonwood  tree.  The  length  of  the 
boat  was  forty  feet,  and  was  about  four  feet  wide.  It 
was  run  by  sail  and  also  by  oars.  On  this  craft  they 
shipped  their  hogs  and  also  their  goods. 

"This  pirogue  is  entitled  to  more  particular  atten- 
tion, because  it  was  put  to  many  uses  of  convenience  and 
utility  among  the  early  settlers.     It  was  the  first  craft 
used  to  carry  people  across   the   Illinois   Eiver   at   the 
mouth  of  Spoon  Eiver,  and  it  was  the  first   craft   that 
the  Phelpses  used"  (we  shall  come  to  the  Phelpses  later 
on)  "in  shipping  their  first  stock  of  goods  from  St.  Louis 
to  Lewistown,  and  this  was  the  first  stock  of  goods  ever 
brought  to  Fulton  County.     This  pirogue  was  also  used 
by  the  early  settlers  to  run  down  Spoon  Eiver  to  the  Illi- 
nois Eiver,  and  thence  down  the  Illinois  Eiver   to    the 
mouth  of  the  Sangamon  Eiver,  and  then  up  the  Sanga- 
mon  to  Sangamon  town,  where  there  was  a  watermill  to 
which  our  people  took  their  grain    to    be   ground   into 
breadstuff.     A  great  deal  of  skill  had  been  used  in  dig- 
ging out  and  constructing  this  pirogue.     For   years   it 
took  the  place  of  the  magnificient  steamboat  and  railway 
trains  that  later  generations  employed." 
When  Mr.  Eoss  came  to  the  present  site  of  Lewistown,  all 
that  country  lying  between  the  Mississippi   and  the   Illinois 
rivers  and  extending  to  the  northern  boundary  of  the  state 
was  included  in  the  county  of  Pike.     Mr.  Eoss   immediately 
took  steps  to  effect  the  organization  of  Fulton  County,  and 
by  1823  he  had  accomplished  not  only  this  but   the  town  of 
Lewistown  had  been  platted  from  the  quarter  section  which 
came  to  him  from  the  government,  and  had  been  established 
as  the  county  seat.      In  1825  Peoria  county  also  was  carved 
out  of  this  great  territory,  but  until  that  time  the  whole  north- 
ern portion  of  the  state,  including  people  from  Ft.  Dearborn 
(now  Chicago)  had  had  to  come  to  Lewistown  for  marriage, 
tavern,  and  ferry  licenses ;  to  pay  their  taxes,  and  do  all  the 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  293 

county  business.     The  old  court  record  book  for  1823  gives 

under  the  date  of  June  6th: 

"On  motion  it  was  ordered  that  Ossian  M.  Eoss  have 
license  to  keep  an  inn  or  tavern  in  the  house  where  he 
now  resides  in  said  county  by  paying  the  sum  of  ten  dol- 
lars in  state  paper. 

' '  On  motion  it  was  ordered  that  the  following  be  the 
list  of  tavern  rates,  to-wit:  victuals  25c,  horsekeeping 
per  night  371/oc,  lodging  per  night  12%c,  whiskey  per  half 
pint.  12^0,  rum  and  gin  per  half  pint  25c ;  French  brandy 
per  half  pint  50c,  wine  per  half  pint  37Mjc,  and  all  other 
liquors  in  like  proportion." 

On  the  record  book  for  January  27th,  1823,  we  find  three 
county  commissioners  "having  been  appointed  agreeable  to 
the  act  of  Congress ' '  reporting  among  other  matters,  the  dona- 
tion by  Ossian  M.  Ross  to  "said  County  of  Fulton  a  good  war- 
rantee deed  in  fee  simple  for  the  following  town  lots  for  pub- 
lic buildings. ' '  These  lots  are  for  the  site  of  a  court  house 
and  jail,  for  a  "burying  yard",  for  a  meeting  house,  a  school 
house,  a  Masonic  Hall  and  not  less  than  six  lots  for  a  "public 
Squear." 

Having  thus  generously  dowered  the  town  which  he  had 
named  for  his  little  son  Lewis,  and  helped  to  put  in  motion 
the  machinery  of  civilization  in  this  new  country,  Mr.  Eoss, 
at  the  end  of  the  decade,  moved  to  new  pastures  across  the 
Illinois,  and  there,  at  a  point  just  opposite  to  the  mouth  of 
Spoon  Eiver,  gave  himself  afresh  to  the  labors  of  organiza- 
tion and  established  the  town  of  Havana,  at  which  place  he 
lived  until  his  death. 

The  first  merchant  to  open  a  store  in  the  newly  platted 
town  was  Judge  Stephen  Phelps.  He  came  with  his  five  sons 
from  Sangamon  County  in  1824,  to  which  place  they  had  ar- 
rived from  Palmyra,  New  York,  four  years  earlier.  A  few 
months  later  he  was  joined  by  his  son-in-law  John  W.  Proctor 
and  his  wife.  The  Phelps  and  Proctor  families  have  been 
closely  associated  ever  since,  through  marriage  and  business 
affiliations.  When  Judge  Phelps  was  established  he  took  his 


294  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

son  Myron  into  partnership  with  him  and  the  store  came  to 
be  known  under  the  name  of  "Phelps  and  Son".  In  time  the 
daughter  of  Myron  Phelps  married  Charles  Proctor,  a  relative 
of  John  W.  Proctor,  and  he  became  a  member  of  the  firm; 
Henry,  the  son  of  Myron  Phelps,  ultimately  succeeded  to  his 
father's  place  and  the  firm  name  became  "Phelps  and  Proc- 
tor"; and  finally,  on  the  retirement  of  Mr.  Phelps,  Mr.  Proc- 
tor took  his  son  Charles,  Jr.,  now  grown  to  manhood,  into 
partnership  and  he  is  now  in  active  management  of  the  store 
which  is  approaching  its  centennial. 

The  sons  of  Judge  Phelps  were,  like  their  father,  natur- 
ally adapted  to  the  mercantile  business.  Charles  and  Myron 
remained  with  him  in  the  store  at  Lewistown;  Sumner  and 
Alexis  went  to  Yellow  Banks — now  Oquawka — on  the  Mississ- 
ippi where  they  established  a  Trading  Post,  but  William,  in 
whom  the  spirit  of  adventure  predominated,  found  abundant 
opportunity  for  its  exercise  in  the  operation  of  the  Indian 
trade  about  Lewistown.  Much  of  the  Phelps'  business,  both 
at  Lewistown  and  at  Yellow  Banks  was  Indian  trade  and  the 
preeminence  of  their  success  in  dealing  with  the  red-skins  was 
due  to  their  honesty  and  their  unfailing  kindness  to  them. 
Although  the  valleys  of  both  the  Spoon  and  the  Illinois  Eivers 
were  thickly  populated  with  the  Indians,  yet  many  came  from 
great  distances,  and  Judge  Phelps  kept  a  house  for  the  ex- 
clusive accommodation  of  such.  Mrs.  Phelps,  too,  had  a 
motherly  eye  upon  them  and  no  squaw  or  papoose  ever  lacked 
for  care  or  food  while  within  her  province. 

But  especially  beloved  among  these  people  was  the 
young  son  of  the  Judge  and  Mrs.  Phelps,  William.  Al- 
though he  was  but  sixteen  when  he  first  arrived  in  Lewis- 
town,  he  had  attained  the  height  and  proportion  of  a  full- 
sized  man;  his  great  strength,  together  with  his  athletic 
taste  and  skill,  won  the  admiration  of  the  young  braves  and 
he  entered  with  them  into  their  games,  wrestling,  running 
and  target  practice  and  sometimes  joined  them  on  hunting 
and  fishing  trips.  They  gave  him  the  name  of  Che-che-pin- 
e-quah,  meaning  powerful  shoulders,  arms  and  neck.  His 


CAPTAIN  WILLIAM  PHELPS. 

"Che-che-pin-e-quah." 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  295 

hands,  they  said,  were  like  a  woman's  but  having  the  grip  of 
a  bear. 

Che-che-pin-e-quah  's  popularity  with  the  Indians  stood 
him  in  good  stead  when  his  father  allotted  him  their  trade  for 
his  portion  of  the  business.  So  impatient  he  was  to  prove  him~ 
self  that  instead  of  waiting  for  the  furs  and  other  peltry  to 
be  brought  to  him  he  went  out  among  the  Indian  villages  and 
collected  it  from  them  and  soon  had  a  great  shipment,  and 
was  off  without  delay  to  St.  Louis  to  market  it. 

At  first  a  canoe  was  used  for  transportation;  then  a 
raft  was  requisitioned  and  poles  and  sails  were  employed; 
but  afterwards  as  the  trade  became  more  extensive  and  the 
values  of  the  furs  increased,  better  transportation  facilities 
became  necessary,  so  this  intrepid  youth,  now  arrived  at  the 
age  of  nineteen,  purchased  a  first  class  river  boat  which  he 
christened  "The  Pavilion,"  and  which  he  anchored  at  Ha- 
vana. 

His  cargoes  by  this  time  were  considerable.  Mr.  Harvey 
Boss  tells  of  seeing  the  boat  loaded  at  one  time.  He  says: 
1 '  The  cargo  consisted  of  barrels  of  pork  and  honey,  packages 
of  deer-skins  and  furs,  barrels  of  dried  venison,  hams,  bees- 
wax and  tallow,  sacks  of  pecans,  hickory  nuts,  ginseng, 
feathers  and  dry  hides."  Ordinarily  four  days  were  re- 
quired to  make  the  trip  to  St.  Louis,  but  adverse  conditions 
of  weather  and  high  water  so  increased  the  difficulties  of 
transportation  that  several  weeks  were  occupied  with  the  trip. 
The  brothers  at  Oquawka  patronized  the  boat  and  the  return 
trip  brought  supplies  to  the  Lewistown  store.  In  his  twenty- 
fourth  year  Mr.  Phelps — who  was  now  and  always  afterward 
known  as  Captain  Phelps — married  Miss  Caroline  Kelsey  of 
Lewistown,  and  went  with  her  into  the  wilds  of  Iowa,  where 
he  established  a  trading  point  near  the  present  site  of  Des 
Moines — a  post  which  he  maintained  for  sixteen  years.  It 
was  from  this  period  of  his  life  that  Mr.  "W.  T.  Davidson  and 
Miss  Margaret  George  drew  the  material  for  their  novel  called 
"The  Yellow  Rose,"  taking  their  title  from  the  name  which 
the  Indians  gave  to  the  lovely  blond  woman  who  was  the  Cap- 
tain's wife. 


296  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

These  years  on  the  frontier  were  filled  with  adventure 
and  enterprise.  No  fur  trader  of  his  time  was  more  favor- 
ably nor  better  known  than  Captain  Phelps.  The  volume  of 
his  business  was  enormous,  his  customers  among  the  Indians 
extending  as  far  as  the  Rocky  Mountains.  He  was  univer- 
sally trusted  by  the  people  among  whom  he  dealt  and  the  con- 
fidence which  he  gained  at  this  time  made  him  of  signal  serv- 
ice to  the  Government  at  the  time  of  the  Black  Hawk  war.  He 
was  a  warm  personal  friend  not  only  of  Black  Hawk  but  of  the 
chief  who  was  to  succeed  him,  Keokuk,  and  although  he  joined 
Captain  Gains'  company  of  Illinois  Volunteers  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Indian  trouble,  his  sympathy  for  the  red  men  and 
their  desire  to  recover  the  territory  lost  through  the  ignor- 
ance and  cupidity  of  their  chiefs,  never  failed  him.  At  the 
close  of  the  war,  and  after  he  was  released  from  his  confine- 
ment at  Fort  Monroe,  Black  Hawk  returned  to  his  people  and 
eventually  built  himself  a  house,  after  the  manner  of  the 
white  man,  near  the  home  of  Captain  Phelps.  But  the  old 
chief  was  disheartened.  His  power  was  gone ;  his  old  home  in 
the  Bock  River  country  lost  to  him  forever,  and  in  few  months 
he  died.  It  is  probable  that  in  his  passing  Black  Hawk  left 
no  friend  who  grieved  his  loss  more  sincerely,  nor  who  after- 
wards did  his  memory  greater  honor  than  Che-che-pin-e- 
quah. 

During  the  time  of  the  Indian  troubles  Captain  Phelps' 
boat  was  requisitioned  to  help  in  the  removal  of  captive  In- 
dians and  of  their  squaws  and  papooses  up  the  Mississippi 
and  across  to  the  western  side  where  their  new  territory 
was  located.  On  one  of  these  trips  an  incident  occurred  that 
evermore  endeared  him  to  the  Indian  people.  There  had 
been  a  great  bustle  and  confusion  in  getting  the  Indians  on 
board,  and  by  some  chance  two  squaws  had  left  their  babies 
behind  asleep  in  their  wigwams.  The  boat  was  well  under 
way  when  they  discovered  their  loss  and  in  great  excitement 
and  distress,  their  black  hair  disheveled,  tears  running  down 
their  cheeks  and  milk  streaming  from  their  breasts,  they 
rushed  to  the  captain — their  one  sure  friend — and  implored 
him  to  return.  He  immediately  reassured  the  frantic  women, 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  297 

rang  the  bell,  ordered  the  boat  back  to  shore,  and  the 
papooses  were  restored  to  their  mothers,  to  their  great  joy 
and  immeasurable  relief.  Later  on,  when  the  Indian  troubles 
were  at  an  end,  the  two  squaws  brought  their  little  rescued 
boys  to  the  trading  post  for  the  Captain  to  see,  and  to  repeat 
again  and  again  expressions  of  gratitude;  nor  .did  they  fail 
to  find  many  services  of  kindness  to  render  him,  his  wife  and 
his  children  in  after  years. 

In  1846  Captain  Phelps  sold  his  trading  post  and  boat 
and  returned  to  Lewistown  where,  as  also  at  Havana  and 
Ipava,  he  entered  the  mercantile  business,  built  an  elevator 
on  Spoon  River,  operated  the  ferry  across  the  Illinois  at  Ha- 
vana and,  after  the  Civil  War — during  which  period  he  served 
as  Provost  Marshal  for  his  Congressional  district — bought 
many  acres  of  the  hill  country  about  the  Spoon,  and  there, 
where  in  his  boyhood  he  had  visited  the  wigwams  of  his  In- 
dian friends,  put  his  herds  to  graze.  In  his  later  life,  ten 
years  after  the  death  of  the  "Yellow  Eose,"  he  married  Miss 
Tillie  M.  Guernsey,  a  woman  of  much  cultivation,  whose  af- 
fection still  keeps  green  the  memory  of  this  remarkable  man. 
The  Indian  friends  of  Che-che-pin-e-quah  never  forgot  him, 
nor  failed  to  avail  themselves  of  every  opportunity  to  send 
him  messages  of  greeting.  His  old  friend  Keokuk  had 
died  soon  after  the  Captain's  departure  from  the  trading 
post,  but  Chief  Joe  of  a  later  generation,  with  his  two  wives 
and  several  children,  once  planned  to  visit  him.  They  had 
reached  Peoria  when  the  illness  of  one  of  the  children  neces- 
sitated their  turning  back  and  the  trip,  much  to  the  regret  of 
both  the  Captain  and  his  Indian  friends,  was  never  consum- 
mated. 

The  long  adventurous  life  of  this  man  would  furnish  a 
volume  of  fascinating  tales.  He  was,  himself,  a  famous  story 
teller  and  one  who  never  hesitated  to  turn  a  point  against 
himself.  There  is  one  which  he  used  to  tell  as  illustrating 
his  belief  in  the  efficacy  of  prayer. 

As  a  boy  he  had  visited  the  lead  mines  of  Galena  where 
his  brother  Myron  had  certain  interests.  Once,  when  walk- 
ing over  the  rough  country  thereabouts,  his  attention  was 


298  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

attracted  by  an  eagle  circling  high  above  him.  Thinking  to 
discover  its  eyrie,  he  kept  his  eye  upon  the  bird  and  inad- 
vertently wandered  out  of  the  beaten  path  and  stumbled 
into  one  of  the  open  pits.  The  moment  was  a  perilous  one; 
the  rough  stone  ledge  on  which  he  had  been  able  to  fasten 
his  hold  was  crumbling  beneath  his  weight;  below  him,  for 
all  he  knew,  yawned  a  bottomless  abyss,  and  in  that  frantic 
moment  he  searched  his  memory  for  prayer.  The  Lord's 
Prayer  escaped  him,  but  his  childhood's  supplication  was  too 
firmly  rooted  in  subconsciousness  to  desert  him  now,  and  there, 
hanging  by  his  hands,  this  great  strapping  youth  prayed, 
"Now  I  lay  me  down  to  sleep."  At  that  point  his  hold  gave 
way  and  he  fell,  helpless  but  unscathed,  to  the  bottom  of  the 
pit — a  distance  of  perhaps  f dur  feet ! 

IV. 

OLD  LEWISTOWN — CONTINUED. 

Perhaps  the  next  man  of  importance  to  take  up  his  abode 
in  Lewistown,  one  who  was  to  keep  for  many  years  a  shaping 
hand  upon  her  destinies,  was  he  who  is  referred  to  in  the 
introductory  poem  of  the  "Anthology,"  "The  Hill,"  as 
Major  "Walker  who  had  talked 
With  venerable  men  of  the  revolution. 

His  death  occurred  as  late  as  1897  and  his  memory,  which 
remained  undimmed  to  the  last,  covered  with  wonderful  clear- 
ness and  precision  nine  decades  of  a  century. 

Major  Walker  was  a  native  of  Virginia,  and  a  man  who 
already  had  arrived  at  considerable  distinction  when  he  came 
to  Illinois  for,  while  yet  but  twenty-one,  as  Major  in  the  state 
militia,  he  had  been  appointed  to  the  command  of  the  escort 
of  Lafayette  when  that  great  man  paid  his  fourth  visit  to 
this  country  in  1824,  accompanying  him  during  almost  all  of 
that  triumphal  trip  through  Virginia. 

In  1835  the  Major,  then  a  man  of  thirty- two,  came  with 
his  bride  of  a  year  to  Illinois  and  to  Lewistown.  He  subse- 
quently built  a  commodious  house  on  the  very  place  that 
Ossian  Ross  had  left  five  years  earlier,  and  there  he  lived 
out,  in  dignity  and  unfailing  usefulness,  his  remaining  years. 


MAJOR  WALKER 
"Who   Talked   With   the   Men   of  the   Revolution.' 


vol.  xiv.  Nos.  3-4        xhe  Spoon  River  Country  299 

In  politics  the  Major  was  a  Whig  of  most  uncompromis- 
ing conviction,  schooled  in  the  school  of  great  statesmen  and 
great  men.  In  Virginia  he  had  listened  to  such  men  as 
Thomas  Jefferson,  James  Madison,  John  Eandolph  and 
Henry  Clay ;  and  in  the  new  land  to  which  he  had  adventured 
he  was  to  meet  and  to  hold  in  the  close  intimacy  of  an  abid- 
ing friendship  one  whose  destiny  was  to  carry  him  to  in- 
finitely greater  heights — Abraham  Lincoln. 

Major  Walker's  acquaintance  with  Lincoln  began  in  1838 
when  both  were  serving  in  the  Legislature  in  the  old  State 
Capitol  at  Vandalia.  Adlai  E.  Stevenson,  in  an  address  on 
Stephen  A.  Douglas  which  he  delivered  before  the  Illinois 
State  Historical  Society,  said  of  that  body: 

1 '  The  Tenth  General  Assembly  was  the  most  notable 
in  Illinois  history.     Upon  the  roll  of   members    of   the 
House,  in  the  old  capitol  at  Vandalia,  were  names  in- 
separably associated  with  the  history  of  the  State  and 
the  Nation.    From  its  list  were  yet  to  be  chosen  two  Gov- 
ernors of  the  Commonwealth,  one  member  of  the  Cabinet, 
three  Justices  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  State,  eight 
Representatives  in  Congress,  six  Senators,  and  one  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States.    That  would  indeed  be  a  not- 
able assemblage  of  law  makers  in  any  country  or  time, 
that  included  in  its  membership:  McClernand,  Edwards, 
Ewing,    Semple,    Logan,    Hardin,    Browning,    Shields, 
Baker,  Stuart,  Douglas  and  Lincoln." 
The  chief  measure  before  the  Legislature  at  this  time 
concerned  the  building  of  the  Illinois  Central  Railroad,  a  bill 
having  been  introduced  to  obtain  from  Congress  grants  of 
land  to  aid  in  its  construction.    This  measure,  which  Major 
Walker  felt  to  be  disastrous  to  the  fortunes  of  the  state,  was 
warmly  approved  by  Lincoln,  showing  even  in  that  early  day 
his  certain  vision  and  statesmanship,  for  it  was  the  very  suc- 
cess of  this  measure  that  contributed  more,  perhaps,  than  any 
other  issue  of  that  day,  to  the  great  prosperity  of  Illinois. 
Those  familiar  with  this  period  in  the  state 's  history  will  re- 
member how  the  completion  of  the  road  marked  the  beginning 
of  an  era  of  marvelous  development  in  Illinois  and  gave  a 


300  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

new  impetus  to  all  lines  of  industrial  progress.  The  five 
years  following  the  passage  of  that  bill  saw  an  increase  in 
the  population  of  the  state  from  nine  hundred  thousand  to 
near  one  and  a  half  million,  and  the  prosperity  of  the  state 
was  assured.  The  final  passage  of  the  bill  was  due  chiefly  to 
the  labors  of  Stephen  A.  Douglas,  though  Justice  Breese  had 
advocated  the  measure  in  a  former  session. 

The  friendship  established  between  Major  Walker  and 
Lincoln  at  Vandalia  was  augmented  during  the  following  as- 
sembly to  which  they  were  both  re-chosen  from  their  respec- 
tive counties:  The  Capital,  in  the  meantime,  had  been  re- 
moved to  Springfield  and  it  was  while  the  two  were  attending 
Legislature  there  that  the  intimacy  grew  and  became  for  the 
Major  a  fruitful  source  of  reminiscence  in  the  years  that 
followed. 

In  an  interview  which  Mr.  Francis  M.  Love  of  Lewistown 
had  with  him  in  1895,  he  spoke  of  the  evenings  when  Lincoln 
would  come  to  his  room  and  how,  when  tired  of  telling  stories 
he  would  ask  for  a  little  music  and  he,  the  Major,  would  play 
for  him.  Also  when  he  went  to  see  Lincoln  the  beloved  fiddle 
would  go  along.  It  was  not  all  stories  and  fiddling  though. 
Many  grave  matters  were  discussed  and  among  them  the  one 
that  always  transcended  all  others — the  question  of  human 
slavery. 

On  one  of  these  visits  Lincoln  bantered  the  Major  for  a 
wrestling  match.  The  Major  was  a  fine  figure  of  a  man, 
almost  as  tall  as  Lincoln  and  well  proportioned,  but  he  was 
no  wrestler.  He  referred  him,  however,  to  his  friend  and 
colleague  Jonas  Rawalt.  Rawalt,  who  shared  with  Walker  the 
leadership  of  the  Whig  party  in  Fulton  County,  was  a  man  of 
smaller  build  and  for  that  reason  Lincoln  demurred.  The 
Major,  however,  assured  him  that  he  need  not  stand  back  on 
that  account;  Rawalt  accepted  the  challenge  and  the  match 
was  on.  Lincoln,  given  his  choice  of  the  holds,  chose  the  back 
hold  which  was  just  what  Rawalt  wanted. 

"Did  Lincoln  throw  him?"  asked  Mr.  Love. 

"Well,  I  guess  not"  laughed  the  Major,  enjoying  the 
affair  afresh  in  reminiscence. 


Vol.  xiv.  NOB.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  301 

''Throw  Rawalt?  I  guess  not!  There  was  not  a  man 
in  that  Legislature  could  do  that.  Rawalt  threw  Lincoln  be- 
fore you  could  count  ten  to  save  you.  You  see  Rawalt  came 
from  the  logging  country  in  Illinois  where  he  had  a  great 
reputation  as  a  wrestler.  Lincoln  laughed  as  heartily  as  any 
of  us  over  the  incident. ' ' 

An  amusing  affair  which  the  Major  liked  to  laugh  over 
was  in  reference  to  a  temperance  lecture  that  was  held  in  the 
old  Free  Mason  Hall  in  Lewistown.  Lincoln  had  been  asked 
to  address  the  meeting,  but  he  was  trying  a  case  that  evening 
before  Judge  Douglas.  "So,"  said  the  Major,  "Lincoln  asked 
Cal  Winchel,  another  visiting  attorney,  to  go  over  and  make 
the  speech  for  him.  He  knew  that  Winchel  was  a  drinking 
man  but  thought  he  would  make  a  very  fine  temperance 
speech.  When  he  had  finished  speaking  they  passed  the 
pledge  around  for  Cal  Winchel  to  sign. 

'What?'  says  Cal,  'me  sign  that?  Well,  I  guess  not.  You 
don't  find  me  doing  anything  so  foolish  as  to  sign  a  temper- 
ance pledge.  Why, '  he  said,  '  I  'd  rather  be  shot  than  sign  it ! ' 

"Lincoln,"  continued  the  Major,  "used  to  tell  the  story 
often  on  Cal  Winchel  who  afterward  became  a  judge  and  a 
good  one,  but  never,  so  far  as  I  know,  quit  drinking." 

Lewistown  has  boasted  four  court  houses  in  its  time,  but 
the  one  that  is  always  referred  to  as  the  "old  Court  House," 
the  one  round  which  the  pleasantest  memories  cluster,  the  one 
which  "Silas  Dement"  burned  on  that  moonlight  night  (De- 
cember 14th,  1895),  was  designed  and  built  under  the  direc- 
tion of  Major  Walker  in  1838;  one  John  Tomkins,  being  the 
master-builder.  It  was  burned  on  the  Major's  ninetieth 
birthday. 

The  court  house  burning  is  one  of  the  several  dramatic 
foci  which  give  to  the  "Anthology"  almost  the  suggestion  of 
a  plot.  It  directly  involved  the  fortunes  of  at  least  three 
characters  of  the  book :  ' '  Silas  Dement, ' '  who  performed  the 
incendiary  deed,  "W.  Lloyd  Garrison  Standard"  who  de- 
fended the  "patriot  scamps"  who  planned  the  affair,  and 
"A.  E.  Culbertson"  who  voiced  his  disaffection  from  the 
grave  that  "Editor  Wheadon"  and  "Thomas  Rhodes" 


302  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

should  be  given  a  tablet  of  bronze  while  his  own  contributions 
of  labor  and  money  toward  the  building  of  the  new  temple 

are  but  memories  among  the  people 
Gradually  fading  away,  and  soon  to  descend 
With  them  to  this  oblivion  where  I  lie. 
None  of  these  names  in  any  way  suggests  the  principals 
involved  in  the  court  house  scandal,  nor  did  the  "  Silas  De- 
ment" of  the  actual  occurrence  suffer  incarceration  in  the 
penitentiary  at  Joliet,  though  a  certain  "  presumptive  de- 
linquent" laid  in  jail  for  a  season  pending  trial;  but  there  is 
no  one  in  Lewistown  or  Fulton  county  not  familiar  with  one 
version  or  another  of  the  alleged  plot  arising  out  of  one  of 
the  town's  epic  struggles  to  retain  the  county  seat.  In  1878 
her  claim  had  been  contested  by  Canton,  a  thriving  manufac- 
turing town  in  the  county;  in  1888  Cuba,  another  avid  neigh- 
bor, sought  to  win  the  prize ;  and  pending  the  rounding  of  an- 
other ten  years,  Canton  was  supposed  again  to  be  casting 
covetous  eyes  in  her  direction.  It  seemed  obvious  that  some 
drastic  measure  must  be  resorted  to.  If  the  old  court  house 
should  be  destroyed  and  a  new  one  built  before  the  time  ar- 
rived for  the  next  contest  it  was  fairly  certain  that  the  County 
would  not  consent  to  a  fresh  draft  upon  her  funds  for  many 
years  to  come.  However  that  may  have  been  the  court  house 
burned,  and  there  was  a  great  scandal.  Certain  prominent 
men  were  tried  for  conspiracy,  but  nothing  came  of  that.  The 
county  refused  to  shoulder  the  expense  of  a  new  building  and 
the  new  court  house  was  built  by  private  subscriptions  from 
citizens  of  Lewistown  and  the  immediate  vicinity. 

The  event  of  that  night  in  December  of  1895  as  described 
by  " Silas  Dement"  is  a  dramatic  one: 

It  was  moon-light,  and  the  earth  sparkled 

With  new-fallen  frost. 

It  was  midnight  and  not  a  soul  was  abroad. 

Out  of  the  chimney  of  the  court  house 

A  grey-hound  of  smoke  leapt  and  chased 

The  northwest  wind. 

I  carried  a  ladder  to  the  landing  of  the  stairs 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  303 

And  leaned  it  against  the  frame  of  the  trap- 
door 

In  the  ceiling  of  the  portico 
And  1^  crawled  under  the  roof  amid  the  rafters 
And  flung  among  the  seasoned  timbers 
A  lighted  handful  of  oil-soaked  waste. 
Then  I  came  down  and  slunk  away. 
In  a  little  while  the  fire-bell  rang — • 
Clang!    Clang!    Clang! 
And  the  Spoon  Eiver  ladder  company 
Came  with  a  dozen  buckets  and  began  to  pour 

water 

In  the  glorious  bon-fire,  growing  hotter, 
Higher  and  brighter,  till  the  walls  fell  in, 
And  the  limestone  columns  where  Lincoln 

stood 
Crashed  like  trees  when  the  woodman  fells 

them. 

When  I  came  back  from  Joliet 
There  was  a  new  court  house  with  a  dome. 
For  I  was  punished  like  all  who  destroy 
The  past  for  the  sake  of  the  future. 
The  building  which  Major  Walker  had  designed  upon  the 
lines  which  the  Virginians  had  adapted  from  the  old  Greek 
ideals — the  rectangular  structure  relieved  by  four  great  pil- 
lars in  front — was  a  thing  to  please  the  eye,  being  both  simple 
and  dignified.  Its  upper  story  was  originally  reached  by  means 
of  a  circular  stairway  on  the  inside,  but  the  danger  and  in- 
convenience of  that  arrangement  soon  urged  the  advisability 
of  having  the  stairway  placed  on  the  outside  from  under  the 
deep  portico.     The  total  cost  of  the  building  was  only  eight 
thousand   dollars,    and  it  is  amusing  to  discover  that  those 
great  columns  which  were  quarried  from  the  Spoon  Eiver 
bottom,  cost  but  one  and  a  half  dollars  a  section.     It  is  not 
true,  as  " Silas  Dement"  would  have  us  believe,  that  in  the 
fire  they  ' '  Crashed  like  trees  when  the  woodman  fells  them ' '. 
They  were  in  fact  left  standing  and  the  two  central  ones — the 
pillars  between  which  Lincoln  stood  to  make  his  great  speech 


304  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

in  1858 — were  afterwards  removed  to  the  cemetery  and  there 
erected  as  a  memorial  inscribed  "To  Our  Patriot  Dead". 
The  others  may  be  found  in  sections,  placed  here  and  there 
about  the  town,  used  chiefly  as  mounting-blocks  before  the 
houses  of  the  citizens  who  hold  the  old  building  in  beloved 
memory. 

The  old  court  house,  from  its  very  earliest  history  cher- 
ished the  tradition  of  great  men.  As  early  as  the  forties 
Judge  Stephen  A.  Douglas  was  presiding  at  the  Fulton 
County  court  and  Edward  Dickinson  Baker  (the  beloved 
"Ned  Baker,"  "the  silver  tongued")  frequently  plead  be- 
fore its  bar.  Mr.  W.  T.  Davidson,  in  his  "Famous  Men  I 
Have  Known  in  the  Military  Tract"  says  of  him: 

"From  my  sixth  or  seventh  year  I  vividly  recall 
that  splendid  specimen  of  young  manhood  as  he  appeared 
in  the  old  court-house,  always  crowded  by  people  of  the 
county  who  came  to  meet  their  favorite  party  leaders 
and  to  feast  upon  their  oratory. 

"But  Ned  Baker  was  in  a  class  by  himself.  If  he 
only  spoke  for  five  minutes  to  court  on  some  point  of 
law,  the  crowded  court  room  was  all  attention.  But  if  in 
a  murder  case  he  spoke  for  hours  his  audience  was 
thrilled  to  the  verge  of  collapse.  Two-thirds  of  a  cen- 
tury has  passed,  but  I  can  see  that  straight,  lithe,  blond, 
graceful  youth  as  he  swayed  his  audience,  jurors,  the 
bar  and  even  the  judge  upon  the  bench  with  the  music 
•of  his  voice  and  his  word-pictures,  his  irresistible  logic, 
his  illustrations,  and  the  unconscious,  spontaneous,  per- 
fervid  oratory  that  come  as  fresh  to  me  as  when  a  child 
— like  the  musk  of  an  ancient  queen  that  fills  her  apart- 
ment an  age  since  she  is  dead. 

"Glorious  Ned  Baker,  who  led  our  Illinois  troops 
from  victory  to  victory  in  Mexico,  and  while  a  United 
States  Senator  from  Oregon,  was  shot  dead  at  Ball's 
Bluff  in  1861  while  leading  a  brigade  in  that  heroic  battle 
for  the  Union." 

General  James  Shields  was  a  familiar  figure  here.  He 
was  not  only  a  great  orator  and  a  great  soldier,  but  was 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  305 

afterwards  distinguished  as  the  only  American  to  be  chosen 
as  United  States  Senator  from  three  states.  When  Ste- 
phen A.  Douglas  resigned  from  the  bench  of  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  State  of  Illinois  he  was  appointed  by  the  Gov- 
ernor to  fill  his  unexpired  term.  Francis  0 'Shaughnessy,  in 
an  address  delivered  at  the  dedication  of  the  monument  to 
General  Shields  at  Carrollton,  Missouri,  November  12th,  1914, 
said: 

" Shields'  fame  might  have  been  locked  up  in  the 
sheepskins  of  law  libraries  had  not  President  Polk  called 
him  from  the  Supreme  Bench  to  the  office  of  Commis- 
sioner General  of  the  Land  Office  of  the  United  States. 
He  had  just  set  to  work  in  a  broad,  intelligent  way  to 
administer  the  affairs  of  this  big  office  when  the  annexa- 
tion of  Texas,  followed  by  a  chain  of  rapid  events,  cul- 
minated in  a  war  with  Mexico." 

Judge  William  Kellogg  came  to  Canton,  Illinois,  in  the 
early  forties  and  Fulton  County  claimed  him  until  1863  when 
he  went  to  Peoria.  No  man  of  his  period  had  a  surer  grasp 
of  the  politics  of  the  time,  nor  a  more  prophetic  vision.  He 
was  Lincoln's  closest  friend  and  advisor  from  the  birth  of 
the  Republican  party  until  his  ( Kellogg 's)  retirement  from 
his  third  term  of  Congress  in  1857.  Lincoln  was  himself,  of 
course,  in  attendance  on  almost  every  term  of  court  through 
these  years. 

But  not  only  could  the  bar  of  Fulton  County  boast  vis- 
itors of  distinction;  these  splendid  forties  saw  also  the  de- 
velopment of  a  number  of  Lewistown's  citizens  who  later 
were  to  come  into  prominence  in  her  own  and  broader  fields. 
W.  C.  Goudy,  who  had  come  here  from  the  east  to  study  law 
under  Judge  Wead,  and  incidentally  to  lay  the  foundation  of 
that  career  that  was  to  gain  him,  for  many  years  in  later 
life,  the  undisputed  title  of  Chicago's  leading  lawyer;  S.  P. 
Shope,  afterwards  Chief  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of 
Illinois;  Leonard  F.  Ross,  hero  of  Vera  Cruz  and  Cerro 
Gordo,  educated  to  the  law  but  making  his  claim  to  recogni- 
tion in  the  Civil  War  when,  after  the  capture  of  Fort  Donel- 


306  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

son,  he  was  commissioned  Brigadier  General ;  and  Col.  L.  W. 
Boss,  for  whom  the  town  had  been  named,  and  who  was  des- 
tined to  become  its  greatest  and  most  constructive  citizen 
and  who  was  just  beginning  his  long  and  brilliant  career  in 
law  and  politics. 

The  next  decade  was  to  see  the  names  of  Robert  Inger- 
soll,  William  Pitt  Kellogg  and  S.  Corning  Judd  added  to  the 
already  glorious  roll  of  the  old  courthouse.  Ingersoll  the 
audacious,  the  brilliant,  the  great-hearted — in  those  days  a 
radical  Democrat — engaging  here  at  Proctor's  Grove  and  at 
other  points  all  over  the  district,  in  those  joint  debates  with 
Fulton's  "Old  Man  Eloquent,"  Judge  Kellogg,  which  left  a 
trail  of  brilliance  that  lingers  still  in  the  memories  of  those 
who  heard  them — debates  that  were  destined  to  end  in  defeat 
for  Ingersoll  in  the  race  for  that  coveted  seat  in  Congress 
which  he  had  hoped  to  win  from  Kellogg;  William  Pitt  Kel- 
logg (a  distant  relative  and  law  partner  of  the  Judge),  hand- 
some, young,  elegant  in  those  days,  avoiding  the  drudgery  of 
the  office,  but  lounging  about  the  court-house  and  the  offices 
of  his  Lewistown  friends  on  court  days,  delighting  them  with 
his  wit  and  brilliant  anecdote  and  who  was  to  become  in  turn 
Lincoln  Elector,  Governor  of  the  Territory  of  Nebraska,  re- 
construction Governor  of  Louisiana,  and  finally  Senator  from 
the  same  state;  and  S.  Corning  Judd,  who  in  the  seventies 
as  Chancellor  of  the  Episcopal  Diocese  of  Illinois  came  into 
prominence  through  his  prosecution  for  the  Episcopal 
Church  of  the  case  against  the  Eev.  Dr.  Cheney,  which  com- 
menced in  1869  and  is  considered  one  of  the  most  important 
cases  of  this  kind  ever  conducted  in  this  country,  and  who 
was  appointed  Postmaster  of  Chicago  under  Cleveland 
in  1885. 

But  the  Golden  Age  of  Lewistown  was  probably  denoted 
by  the  fifties,  a  period  of  great  importance  in  the  history  of 
the  whole  of  Illinois.  Its  development  was  coincidental  with, 
if  indeed,  not  attributable  to,  the  sudden  rise  of  the  press  to 
a  position  of  enormous  power  and  influence  and  its  wilful 
shaking  off  of  the  old  trammels  and  restraints  that  hitherto 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  307 

had  made  it  an  organ  of  subservience  rather  than  of  leader- 
ship. It  was  the  great  hour  of  the  " country  editor"  in  Illi- 
nois, and  the  press  found  in  this  state,  which  was  virtually 
the  arena  of  the  great  slavery  struggle  that  was  to  terminate 
in  the  Civil  War,  an  instrument  made  to  its  hand. 

It  was  an  anti-slavery  editor,  Paul  Selby,  who  called  to- 
gether the  Illinois  editors  united  on  this  sentiment  and  or- 
ganized a  party  which  should  take  unqualified  grounds  in 
opposition  to  slavery,  and  out  of  this  meeting  grew  the  or- 
ganization of  the  Republican  party,  born  and  nourished  in 
this  State,  and  giving  to  the  nation  one  of  its  greatest  Presi- 
dents and  to  the  world  one  of  its  greatest  Liberators. 

Back  of  the  leaders  on  either  side  of  this  issue  were 
ranged  a  stalwart  group,  and  the  battle  might  be  said  to  have 
been  fought  to  its  ultimate  conclusion  in  the  columns  of  these 
newspapers.  Among  those  on  the  Democratic  side  in  un- 
flinching support  of  Douglas  was  W.  T.  Davidson  of  Lewis- 
town;  a  "country  editor,"  to  be  sure,  but  wielding  one  of 
the  powerful  pens  in  the  Military  Tract,  having  at  his 
disposal  all  the  gifts  of  invective,  sarcasm,  pathos  and  illumi- 
nating humor.  "It  is  not  too  much  to  say"  wrote  a  con- 
temporary, at  his  death, ' '  that  Davidson  belongs  in  that  small 
class  of  really  great  editors;  that  he  was  to  Illinois  provin- 
cial journalism  what  Bennett,  Greeley,  Dana,  Storey,  Medill 
and  other  master  journalists  were  to  national  newspaperdom. 
He  had  filled  and  dominated  his  restricted  sphere  as  thor- 
oughly and  well  as  they  did  their  larger  fields." 

In  Mr.  Davidson's  later  life  he  held  for  the  character  of 
Lincoln  the  most  intense  veneration  and  reverence.  He 
came  to  be  regarded  as  an  important  authority  on  Lincolniana 
and  his  lectures  on  Lincoln  and  Douglas  were  delivered  all 
over  the  United  States.  He  was  one  of  Lewistown's  most 
picturesque  characters. 

The  two  greatest  days  in  the  history  of  the  town,  those 
on  which  it  bases  its  surest  claim  to  historical  recognition,  are 
known  upon  its  calendar  as  "Douglas  Day,"  and  "Lincoln 
Day." 


308  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

Lincoln  and  Douglas  had  become,  as  will  have  been  seen, 
familiar  figures  about  the  streets  of  Lewistown  in  the  forties, 
and  the  passing  years  had  brought  to  both — but  particularly 
to  Douglas — increasing  fame.  Douglas  was  at  this  time  the 
most  noted  man  in  America,  and  the  Democratic  Party  was 
looking  forward  to  the  next  Presidential  election  to  place  him 
in  the  Executive  Chair.  The  country  was  prescient  with 
some  great  danger  to  the  Union  growing  out  of  the  increasing 
agitation  over  the  question  of  slavery  and  state's  rights  and 
Lincoln,  though  lacking  the  fame  of  Douglas  was  believed  to 
be  no  mean  opponent.  The  challenge  which  Lincoln  had  given 
Douglas  for  that  series  of  debates  throughout  the  state,  which 
has  come  to  be  referred  to  as  the  "hundred  days'  contest," 
had  been  accepted  and  the  Lewistown  speeches  preceded  the 
first  of  those  engagements — the  Ottawa  debate — by  a  few 
days  only. 

Masters,  in  "The  Lincoln  and  Douglas  Debates,"  which 
is  included  in  the  collection  of  his  poems  called  "The  Great 
Valley,"  has  put  into  the  mouth  of  his  uncouth  philosopher 
a  description  of  that  day. 

them  were  great  days. 

One  time  the  Little  Giant  came  here  with  Linkern 

And  talked  from  the  steps  of  the  court-house ; 

And  you  never  saw  such  a  crowd  of  people; 

Democrats,  Whigs,  Locofocos, 

Know-nothings  and  Anti-masonics, 

Blue  lights,  Spiritualists,  Eepublicans 

Free-soilers,  Socialists,  American — such  a  crowd. 

Linkern 's  voice  squeaked  up  high, 

And  didn't  carry. 

But  Douglas ! 

People  out  yonder  in  Procter 's  Grove, 

A  mile  from  the  Court  house  steps, 

Could  hear  him  roar  and  hear  him  say : 

"  I  'm  going  to  trot  him  down  to  Egypt 

And  see  if  he  '11  say  the  things  he  says 

To  the  black  republicans,  in  northern  Illinois." 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  309 

It  made  you  shiver  all  down  your  spine 
To  see  that  face  and  hear  that  voice — 
And  that  was  The  Little  Giant ! 

And  then  on  the  other  hand  there  was 

Abe  Linkern  standing  six  foot  four, 

As  thin  as  a  rail,  with  high-keyed  voice, 

And  sometimes  solemn,  and  sometimes  comic 

As  any  clown  you  ever  saw, 

And  runnin'  Col.  Lankfor's  little  steamer, 

As  it  were  you  know,  which  would  bobble  the  skiff, 

Which  was  the  law ; 

And  The  Little  Giant 's  other  foot 

Would  slip  on  the  bank,  which  was  the  constitution 

And  you  could  almost  hear  him  holler  '  *  ouch. ' ' 

And  Linkern  would  say:   This  argument 

Of  the  Senator's  is  thin  as  soup 

Made  from  the  shadow  of  a  starved  pigeon ! 

And  then  the  crowd  would  yell,  and  the  cornet  band 

Would  play,  and  men  would  walk  away  and  say : 

Linkern  floored  him.    And  others  would  say : 

He  ain't  no  match  for  the  Little  Giant. 

But  I'll  declare  if  I  could  decide 

Which  whipped  the  other. 

Proctor's  Grove,  where  Douglas  delivered  his  address 
on  this  occasion  (you  remember  how  "Hod  Putt"  beholding 
How  Old  Bill  Piersol  and  others  grew  in  wealth 
Robbed  a  traveler  once  in  Proctor's  Grove) 
is  still  referred  to  by  its  original  name,  although  it  is  now 
platted  into  town  lots  under  the  name  of  Davidson's  Sec- 
ond Addition.  It  formerly  comprised  thirteen  acres  shaded 
by  magnificent  forest  trees.  It  lies  to  the  south  and 
west  of  the  town,  within  walking  distance,  and  used  to  be 
the  forum  for  all  open  air  speaking  in  the  early  days  in 
the  history  of  Lewistown.  It  was  the  place  where  po- 
litical rallies  were  held,  and  Fourth  of  July  celebrations,  and 
especially  was  it  noted  as  the  theatre  of  those  stirring 


310  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

debates  that  used  to  engage  the  wit  and  eloquence  and  logic 
of  the  public  men  of  that  day.  It  was  at  Proctor's  Grove 
that  William  Pitt  Kellogg  once  crossed  swords  with  S.  Corn- 
ing Judd;  here  Ingersoll  and  Judge  William  Kellogg  began 
their  series  in  their  senatorial  race  of  1860;  and  here  the 
voice  of  almost  every  distinguished  man  possessed  of  the 
gift  of  oratory  in  central  Illinois  was  heard  at  one  time  or 
another. 

But  the  red  letter  day  for  Proctor's  Grove  is  forever 
fixed  in  its  history  as  August  16, 1858 — "Douglas  Day." 

The  importance  of  the  occasion  can  be  imagined.  On 
the  Friday  preceding  the  Monday  which  was  the  16th  the 
"Little  Giant"  had  spoken  at  Havana,  and  on  Saturday  morn- 
ing a  committee  of  Lewistown's  citizens  from  the  Democratic 
ranks — I  note  among  them  the  names  of  W.  C.  Goudy  and 
Col.  L.  W.  Ross — went  to  that  place  to  escort  Douglas  to 
their  city.  Several  miles  out  of  town  they  were  met  by  a  great 
concourse  of  people  come  out  to  do  him  honor ;  a  brass  band 
played,  and  much  cheering  went  to  the  general  effect  of  a 
triumphal  entry  into  the  town.  Mr.  Douglas  was  entertained 
at  the  house  of  Mr.  Goudy,  and  during  that  three  days'  stay, 
for  he  remained  till  Tuesday  morning,  hundreds  of  citizens 
called  upon  him ;  the  string  band,  that  ubiquitous  small  town 
adjunct,  serenaded  him,  a  display  of  fireworks  added  its 
glare  and  glory,  and  all  went  splendidly. 

On  Monday  morning,  however,  an  effigy  of  "Douglas 
the  Traitor  "  was  found  conspicuously  displayed  in  the  square; 
also  the  ropes  of  the  Democratic  pole  had  been  cut  and  a 
small  civil  war  threatened.  Excitement  ran  high  but  the  mat- 
ter was  finally  passed  over  in  the  press  of  the  great  occasion. 

Immense  delegations  came  to  Lewistown  from  every  town- 
ship in  the  county.  It  was  estimated  that  half  the  county 
was  there,  for  it  must  be  remembered  that  not  only  was  this 
section  of  the  state  intensely  Democratic  but  Douglas  had 
been  for  twenty  years  its  political  hero.  Therefore  when 
he  began  his  speech  that  day  in  Proctor's  Grove  he  literally 
looked  down  upon  acres  of  faces,  probably  5,000.  For  the 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  311 

first  and  only  time  in  his  experience,  it  is  said,  his  voice  was 
unequal  to  the  occasion  and  after  he  had  spoken  for  an  hour 
Col.  Eoss  was  called  upon  to  address  the  people  in  his  stead. 

On  the  following  day,  which  was  August  the  17th,  Lincoln 
came  to  Lewistown.  He,  also,  came  from  Havana  where  he 
had  gone  to  address  the  people.  He  was  escorted  from  that 
place  to  Lewistown  by  a  committee  consisting  of  Major 
Walker,  his  old  friend,  John  W.  Proctor  and  others.  He 
also  was  met  by  a  delegation,  though  a  much  smaller  one 
(seventy-six  horsemen,  seventeen  wagons  and  buggies  are 
mentioned).  No  doubt  the  brass  band  came  again  into  play; 
he  too,  was  serenaded  duly  and  there  was  much  greeting  and 
hand-shaking  to  be  gone  through.  At  two  o  'clock  that  after- 
noon, he  spoke  from  the  portico  of  the  old  court  house.  How 
singularly  at  home  be  must  have  looked!  That  tall,  gaunt, 
dramatic  figure,  full  of  grave  dignity,  standing  between  those 
great  columns  of  unpolished,  native  stone. 

It  is  recorded  that  he  began  simply  and  directly,  as  was 
his  usual  way,  addressing  his  remarks,  apparently,  to  an  old 
man  on  the  right  flank  of  the  crowd.  He  spoke  earnestly 
for  several  minutes ;  then  some  men  on  the  other  side  called 
out:  " Abe,  you've  talked  to  them  fellers  long  enough.  Now 
talk  to  this  side  awhile."  Whereupon  Lincoln  quietly  apolo- 
gized for  his  preoccupied  manner  and  made  the  rest  of  his 
speech  to  the  other  side ! 

Lincoln's  audience  was  by  no  means  so  large  as  Douglas' 
had  been,  but  it  gave  him  close,  even  rapt,  attention.  Major 
Walker  heard  him  with  awe  and  wonder.  Twenty-five  years 
had  passed  since  he  had  heard  his  voice  in  debate,  and  al- 
though he  had  been  told  that  his  friend  had  made  great  pro- 
gress in  the  matter  of  public  speaking  he  was  not  prepared  for 
the  power  and  eloquence,  the  tremendously  moving  quality 
of  his  simple  speech. 

It  was  on  this  occasion  that  Lincoln  delivered  the  glow- 
ing eulogy  on  the  Declaration  of  Independence  which  the 
London  Times  commented  on  as  worthy  to  be  preserved  among 
the  Nation's  classics. 


312  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

Lincoln  was  entertained  at  dinner  that  night  by  Major 
Walker,  spent  the  night  with  Mr.  John  "W.  Proctor,  and  the 
next  morning  was  driven  by  the  Major  to  the  point — thirty- 
two  miles  away — where  he  was  to  take  his  train.  The  Major 
bade  good-bye  to  Lincoln  there,  and  neither  he  nor  Lewistown 
was  to  see  his  face  again. 

V. 

THE  MCNEELY  MANSION. 

Perhaps  the  most  interesting  monument  to  the  fifties 
still  extant  in  Lewistown  is  the  stately  old  house  which  Col. 
L.  W.  Ross,  son  of  Ossian  Boss,  built  in  the  middle  of  the 
decade.  Although  it  has  passed  from  possession  of  the 
family,  and  has  sustained  some  injury  from  fire,  it  is  still  in 
an  excellent  state  of  preservation,  having  been  restored  by 
Mr.  A.  J.  Bay,  with  a  fine  sense  of  fitness  and  an  appreciation 
of  its  historic  value.  Mr.  John  Kennedy  is  the  present  owner 
of  the  house.  It  is,  by  common  consent,  identified  with  the 
McNeely  mansion  of  the  " Anthology."  So  descriptive  of 
the  Boss  fortunes  are  the  first  lines  of  the  Washington  Mc- 
Neely epitaph — except  that  the  girls  were  sent  to  Notre  Dame 
and  Vassar — that  it  reads  like  true  biography : 

Bich,  honored  by  my  fellow  citizens, 

The  father  of  many  children,  born  of  a  noble  mother, 

All  raised  there 

In  the  great  mansion-house,  at  the  edge  of  the  town. 

Note  the  cedar  tree  on  the  lawn ! 

I  sent  all  the  boys  to  Ann  Arbor,  all  the  girls  to  Bockf  ord, 

The  while  my  life  went  on,  getting  more  riches  and  honors — 

Besting  under  my  cedar  tree  at  evening. 

The  years  went  on. 

I  sent  the  girls  to  Europe; 

I  dowered  them  when  married. 

I  gave  the  boys  money  to  start  in  business. 

They  were  strong  children  as  apples 

Before  the  bitten  places  show. 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        xhe  Spoon  River  Country  313 

Also  three  names  of  the  McNeely  children  are  Boss 
names;  but  Mary  died  in  infancy;  John,  who  "fled  the  coun- 
try in  disgrace,"  was  the  bright  particular  star  of  the  fam- 
ily, and  Jennie  who,  peradventure,  "died  in  child-birth,"  is 
Mrs.  G.  K.  Barrere  of  Los  Angeles,  California,  and  has  just 
written  me  in  response  to  my  inquiry  if  I  might  without  of- 
fense to  her  so  identify  her  old  home:  "I  have  not  the  least 
objection  to  your  speaking  of  the  McNeely  mansion  as  the 

Ross  home Adverse  criticism  has  such  a  different 

meaning  to  me  from  what  it  once  had.  It  is  only  the  reflec- 
tion of  one's  own  viewpoint.  There  are  two  sides  to  every- 
thing in  life,  including  people,  and  it  is  up  to  us  which  side 
we  see."  It  is  an  amusing  incongruity,  considering  the  fate 
of  "Jennie,"  that  Mrs.  Barrere 's  letter  ends:  "I  wish  you 
might  see  our  three  grandsons.  They  are  the  joy  of  our 
lives." 

Colonel  Boss  was  forty-three  when  he  began  the  erec- 
tion of  the  "mansion-house  at  the  edge  of  the  town."  Al- 
ready honors  had  begun  to  find  him  out.  He  had  been  twice 
chosen  to  a  seat  in  the  Legislature ;  his  service  in  the  Mexican 
war  had  brought  him  the  title  of  Colonel ;  he  had  been  Presi- 
dential Elector  in  1848 ;  and  he  was  the  acknowledged  leader 
of  the  Democratic  party  in  Central  Illinois. 

In  early  life  he  had  married  Miss  Frances  Simms,  the 
daughter  of  a  fine  old  Virginia  family,  a  sister  to  the  wife  of 
Major  Walker,  and  a  thriving  group  of  boys  and  girls  was 
growing  up  about  him,  crowding  the  modest  limits  of  the 
parental  quarters.  Moreover,  to  build  a  house  is  an  instinc- 
tive act  in  man — a  reaching  out,  perhaps,  after  some  portion 
of  that  material  permanence  that  is  the  undoubted  tenure  of 
things  that  are  made  with  hands. 

Somewhere  along  the  Hudson  Colonel  Boss  had  once 
seen  a  house  that  exactly  pleased  him.  He  had  obtained  the 
plans,  and  now  that  a  permanent  home  was  in  contempla- 
tion, he  carried  them  out  to  the  last  architectural  minutia. 
The  house  stands  today  exactly  as  when  completed.  The 
main  body  of  the  building  is  the  old  square  form  with  the 
wide  hall  running  through  the  center,  but  it  extends 


314  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

in  the  rear  on  three  different  levels,  after  the  New 
England  fashion,  adapting  itself  to  the  gentle  decline  of  the 
land  at  that  point,  beginning  with  the  kitchen  and  servants' 
quarters  and  terminating  in  the  wood  and  carriage  houses. 
Indeed  the  most  interesting  view  of  it  is  obtained  from  the 
rear,  but  trees  and  shrubbery  obscure  its  fine  proportions 
from  the  camera. 

The  house,  which  contains  seventeen  rooms,  was  built 
of  brick  burned  in  its  own  door-yard,  the  stone  for  its  foun- 
dations came  from  the  valley  of  the  Spoon,  where,  also,  the 
lime  for  the  plaster  was  kilned — a  fine  old  house,  as  native  to 
its  surroundings  as  the  forest  trees  on  its  lawn.  H.  V.  V. 
Clute,  a  young  master  carpenter  and  wood-worker,  came  from 
the  East  and  spent  a  year  on  its  interior  finish,  and  the  win- 
dow and  door  lintels,  the  paneled  infolding  shutters  of  the 
long  French  windows  of  the  East  Parlor,  and  the  banisters 
of  the  fine  old  double  staircase  attest  his  skill. 

The  house  is  set  in  spacious  grounds.     There  was  for- 
merly a  small  deer-park  of  twenty  acres  in  the  rear,  and 
There  is  a  garden  of  acacia, 
Catalpa  trees,  and  arbors  sweet  with  vine. 

Although  the  building  was  completed  in  1857,  and  be- 
came a  place  of  hospitality  from  its  inception,  yet  owing  to 
that  troublous  period  preceding  the  breaking  out  of  the  Civil 
War,  the  hard  years  of  its  duration,  and  those  immediate  to 
its  conclusion,  no  social  event  of  importance  took  place  there 
until  in  1869,  when  the  eldest  daughter  of  the  house  gave  her 
hand  in  marriage  to  Mr.  B.  M.  Hinde. 

Mr.  Hinde,  who  is  always  affectionately  referred  to  as 
u Judge"  Hinde,  lived,  until  his  death  two  years  since,  in 
Lewistown  and  the  lovely  oval  face  of  Ellen,  long  since  de- 
ceased, looks  out  from  a  canvas  above  his  mantlepiece — 
"judge"  by  courtesy  only,  a  tribute,  he  used  to  declare,  to 
his  connoisseurship  in  good  whiskies  and  fine  horses.  Indul- 
gence in  both  these  tastes  had  long  since  been  relinquished, 
but  the  title  persisted,  perhaps  on  other  grounds,  for  he  was 
to  the  end  past  master  of  that  subtler,  finer  sport — the  almost 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        xhe  Spoon  River  Country  315 

perished  flower  of  his  generation — a  raconteur  of  delightful 
tales. 

Whatever  traditions  have  come  to  the  enrichment  of  the 
history  of  this  place,  none  are  more  dramatic  than  those  as- 
sociated with  it  through  the  events  of  the  Civil  War.  Those 
were  stirring  times  in  a  section  of  the  state  that  was  essen- 
tially Democratic.  At  a  meeting  held  in  the  old  court-house 
on  April  3rd,  1861,  Leonard  F.  Eoss  withdrew  from  the  old 
party,  but  his  brother,  Colonel  Ross,  remained  in  the  Demo- 
cratic ranks.  In  1863  he  was  chosen  a  member  of  the  House 
of  Eepresentatives,  and  being  twice  re-elected,  served  till 
1869.  But  those  early  years  of  the  war  were  tense  years  for 
Lewistown  and  there  was  a  time  when,  owing  to  trouble  en- 
countered in  making  enrollments  for  the  draft,  and  in  arrest- 
ing deserters,  the  Provost  Marshal  of  the  Congressional  Dis- 
trict sent  a  company  of  German  cavalry — always  referred  to 
as  the  Dutch  cavalry — to  Fulton  county.  A  little  later  these 
were  reenforced  by  fifty  additional  cavalry  and  a  company  of 
eighty  infantry.  Arrests  in  the  south  end  of  the  county  had 
aroused  the  people  in  that  section  to  a  point  of  insurrection. 
"There  are  no  words,"  says  an  old  newspaper  account,  "to 
tell  the  horror  and  excitement  of  that  day."  A  mob  of  six 
or  seven  hundred  armed  men  came  up  from  the  south  of 
the  county  and  sent  in  an  ultimatum  that  unless  the  prisoners 
were  given  up,  they  would  be  rescued  at  whatever  cost.  Colo- 
nel Ross  as  leader  of  the  Democratic  party  naturally  came 
under  the  suspicion  of  being  in  sympathy  with  them,  and  as 
one  of  the  counter-moves  on  the  part  of  the  military,  a  cannon 
was  trained  directly  upon  the  fine  new  house. 

Matters  were,  of  course,  adjusted.  The  prisoners  were 
not  surrendered,  but  they  were  granted  an  immediate  trial 
under  Judge  David  Davis  of  Springfield,  and  were  acquitted. 
The  old  offensive  enrolling  officers  were  removed  and  men  in 
whose  fairness  the  county  had  confidence,  named  in  their 
places.  Both  sides  profited  by  the  experience  and  thereafter 
the  enrolling  went  on  without  resistance;  such  deserters  as 
were  arrested  surrendered  quietly;  and  after  a  time  the  mili- 
tary marched  away. 


316  Josephine  Graven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

Many  memories  stand  about  this  place;  memories  of 
famous  people  entertained  at  its  hospitable  board;  memories 
of  love  and  passion  evinced  by  a  package  of  old  letters,  tied 
with  a  faded  ribbon,  slipped  down  between  the  inner  and 
outer  walls  and  discovered  by  workmen  after  the  recent  fire ; 
memories  of  the  pains  of  birth  and  death;  of  towering  ambi- 
tions and  of  spiritual  disasters;  and  memories  of  that  long 
procession  of  the  dead  who  came  to  lie,  one  by  one  in  the 
library  with  windows  looking  towards  the  west  and,  presently, 
in  the  ' '  burying-yard "  which  their  sturdy  progenitor,  Ossian 
Ross,  had  bequeathed  to  the  city  in  its  infancy,  and  where  so 
many  friends  and  kindred  already  were  "sleeping,  sleeping, 
sleeping,  on  the  hill". 

It  may  be  interesting  to  know  that  the  tradition  of  the  old 
Boss  line  has  been  carried  on  by  the  Colonel's  eldest  son.  John 
Boss,  like  his  father,  entered  the  profession  of  the  law.  He 
began  his  career  in  politics  by  serving  one  term  in  the  Legisla- 
ture of  his  native  state  but  soon  afterwards  he  went  to  Wash- 
ington, D.  C.  He  was  made  postmaster  of  the  capital  city  un- 
der Cleveland  and  during  the  Harrison  administration  re- 
ceived the  appointment  making  him  one  of  three  commis- 
sioners of  the  District  of  Columbia,  a  position  which  he  held 
until  his  death.  His  two  sons,  throughout  the  late  great  war 
served  their  country  in  France,  Tenny  Ross  as  Lieutenant 
Colonel  in  the  regular  army  and  Lee  with  the  engineering 
forces;  and  the  latter 's  son  has  but  lately  graduated  from 
West  Point. 

Not  all  the  memories  are  sad  that  stand  about  the  old 
"McNeely  mansion". 

VI. 

THE  CHURCH  OF  ST.  JAMES. 

It  is  strange  that  during  the  uneasy  period  of  the  Civil 
War  there  should  have  been  added  to  the  town  of  Lewistown 
the  structure  that  has  proved,  perhaps,  the  most  constant 
aesthetic  influence  throughout  the  whole  of  the  Spoon  River 
country — The  Episcopal  Church  of  St.  James. 


'j^'--''\-"'''i'~y&:?% ••'/  •'•'•  •  •  '  -•  •'  - 

""  ,4-? M' 'x''"'  r 


vol.  xiv.  NOB.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  317 

As  early  as  1859,  we  learn  from  the  files  of  The  Fulton 
Democrat,  an  organization  of  that  denomination  was  formed 
and  a  plan  was  made  to  build  a  "beautiful  Gothic  church". 
On  the  old  vestry  book  the  name  of  S.  Corning  Judd  appears 
as  Senior  Warden  and  it  was  doubtless  chiefly  due  to  him  that 
the  ideals  in  church  architectures,  just  beginning  to  obtain  in 
the  East,  found  expression  in  this  little  western  town. 

Mr.  Judd,  who  has  been  referred  to  in  the  chapter  on  Old 
Lewistown,  was  born  in  New  York  state,  and  had,  before  com- 
ing to  Illinois  in  1854,  a  various  experience.  He  studied  law 
in  the  eastern  part  of  the  state,  passing  his  examination  in 
Albany;  took  up  the  practice  of  his  profession  in  Syracuse; 
presently  became  editor  of  the  Syracuse  Daily  Star— an  old- 
line  Whig  paper,  devoted  to  the  interests  of  that  party  as 
represented  by  Webster,  Fillmore  and  other  famous  political 
men.  He  relinquished  that  post  to  accept  a  position  with  the 
Department  of  the  Interior  at  Washington.  After  eighteen 
months  spent  in  that  city  he  returned  to  Syracuse  becoming,  on 
this  occasion,  both  proprietor  and  editor  of  the  Daily  Star. 
Upon  the  general  disruption  of  the  Whig  party  he  sold  his 
paper  and  ventured  west,  coming  to  Lewistown  and  entering 
into  a  law  partnership  with  the  Honorable  W.  C.  Goudy  as 
previously  stated. 

He  was  twenty-seven  when  he  came  to  Lewistown  but  he 
had,  from  earliest  manhood,  been  an  ardent  churchman;  was 
familiar  with  the  best  in  church  architecture  of  his  day;  and 
it  is  probable  that  he  was  acquainted  with,  and  interested  in, 
the  work  and  ideals  of  that  organization  known  as  the  '  *  New 
York  Ecclesiological  Society"  which  was  formed  in  1848  for 
the  avowed  purpose  of  working  certain  radical  changes  in 
ecclesiology,  the  chief  principles  of  which  were  the  adoption 
of  the  Pointed  Gothic  of  the  Augustan  Age  of  Architecture, 
deep  chancels,  proper  furniture  for  chancels,  altars,  and  the 
like. 

The  value  of  this  pioneer  movement  in  America  scarcely 
can  be  over  estimated  when  it  is  remembered  that  prior  to  this 
time  church  building  throughout  the  country  had  consisted 
almost  altogether  in  the  erection  of  unpleasing  rectangular 


318  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

structures,  crudely  reminiscent  of  Grecian  temples,  and 
uniting  in  mongrel  assortment,  the  elements  of  domestic  and 
of  commercial  architecture.  "I  suppose",  said  Ralph  Adams 
Cramm,  in  his  " Quest  of  the  Gothic",  "there  is  no  more 
awful  evidence  of  rampant  barbarism  than  that  which  exists 
in  the  architecture  of  the  United  States  between  the  years  of 
1820  and  1840."  It  seems  strange  indeed  that  up  to  the  build- 
ing of  Trinity  (New  York  City)  by  Upjohn  in  1847,  not  a  single 
church,  constructed  along  the  lines  of  the  fourteenth  century 
Gothic,  was  to  be  found  on  this  continent ;  and  so  undeveloped 
was  the  whole  body  of  liturgical  science  that  it  was  not  till 
1860  that  the  rector  of  even  that  leading  church  had  the  cour- 
age to  vest  its  choir. 

The  labors  of  the  Ecclesiological  Society  covered  a  period 
of  five  years,  ending  its  career  in  1853,  and  already,  in  '59 — 
so  fast  the  flame  of  beauty  runs — in  this  remote  western 
town  of — at  that  time — less  than  a  thousand  inhabitants,  a 
"beautiful  Gothic  church"  was  in  contemplation!  The  suc- 
cess of  this  ambition,  culminating  in  1865,  was  due  to  the  en- 
terprise of  Mr.  Judd  who  secured,  through  influence,  the 
plans  for  the  building,  from  a  New  York  church  architect  of 
considerable  fame,  Edwin  Tuckerman  Potter.  He  consented 
to  furnish  them  only  on  the  consideration  that  no  expense 
should  be  spared  in  the  erection  of  the  building  that  would 
make  for  the  complete  development  of  the  design.  In  ac- 
cordance with  this  stipulation  Mr.  Judd  obtained  the  bulk  of 
the  funds  for  the  enterprise  from  the  East.  He  furnished 
from  this  source,  about  $6,000,  and  the  people  of  Lewistown 
contributed  the  remaining  $2,000  required. 

This  architect,  the  son  of  Bishop  Alonzo  Potter,  was  one 
of  the  first  exponents  of  the  Gothic  in  America.  He  has  to  his 
credit  a  number  of  fine  churches  in  this  country,  notably  the 
Church  of  the  Heavenly  Eest,  N.  Y.,  Colt  Memorial  Church  at 
Hartford,  Conn.,  and  the  Church  of  the  Good  Shepherd,  as 
well  as  the  Memorial  Hall  at  Schenectady,  N.  Y.,  but  it  is 
doubtful  if  he  has  left  to  do  him  honor  any  building,  either 
large  or  small,  more  perfectly  conceived  in  the  faith  of  the 
Seven  Lamps  than  the  little  church  at  Lewistown. 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  319 

As  originally  built — for  a  wing  has  been  added  since — 
the  building  was  66  x  26,  but  the  satisfying  proportion  of  the 
angle  of  its  pointed  roof  to  the  architectural  demands  of  the 
mass,  the  propriety  of  its  moderate  buttresses,  the  grace  and 
fitness  of  its  slender  tower,  all  conspire  toward  the  expres- 
sion of  that  consummate  art  "without  which",  says  Rodin, 
"the  greatest  cathedral  is  less  than  the  smallest  church  that 
has  it". 

It  is  built  of  brick,  now  time  and  weather-worn  to  a  lovely 
monochrome,  and  relies  alone  for  ornament,  upon  a  design  of 
brick-work  that  is  thrown  out  in  mild  relief  and  which  extends 
around  the  building  some  four  feet,  perhaps,  below  the  eaves ; 
and  upon  the  effect  of  the  long  hand-wrought  hinges  across 
the  door  of  the  portico. 

The  master  carpenter  employed  in  the  construction  of  the 
church  was  that  H.  V.  V.  Clute  who  had  come  West  at  the 
behest  of  Col.  Ross  several  years  earlier.  The  stone  and  brick 
work  was  awarded  to  local  workmen  but  a  masonry-artist 
from  Peoria,.  Robert  Turner,  was  employed  for  the  ornate 
portion  and  a  man  was  brought  from  Chicago  for  the  interior 
painting  and  gilding. 

St.  James  has  a  very  beautiful  marble  baptismal  font,  the 
gift  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Clarkson  who  was  the  rector  of  that  St. 
James  Episcopal  Church  of  Chicago  for  which  this  one  was 
named. 

It  is  unfortunate  for  Lewistown  that  St.  James  is  falling 
into  disrepair,  Many  of  its  more  able  parishioners  have 
moved  away  or  died,  and  this  lovely  monument  to  the  spiritual 
and  aesthetic  aspiration  of  an  earlier  day,  which  has  won  the 
praise  of  every  lover  of  good  architecture  who  has  come  with- 
in its  neighborhood,  is  suffering  decline.  Mr.  Frederick 
Fultz,  whose  name  is  associated  with  some  of  the  best  early 
civic  and  domestic  architecture  in  Chicago,  made  at  one  time, 
elaborate  drawings  of  the  building,  and  pronounced  it,  in  his 
opinion,  one  of  the  most  beautiful  and  perfect  examples  of 
Gothic  architecture  in  America,  but  unfortunately  for  the  pur- 
poses of  this  book,  these  drawings  have  disappeared  since 
his  death,  and  no  trace  of  them  can  be  found. 


320  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

Time  and  the  tenderness  of  vines  is  over  it,  but  already 
there  is  about  this  little  church,  but  slightly  more  than  half  a 
century  old,  the  pathos  of  an  unregarded  beauty;  the  fleeting 
loveliness  of  things  that  are  conceived  in  the  high  faith  of  love 
and  aspiration,  but  are  fore-doomed,  after  the  brief  flowering 
of  an  hour,  ' '  to  pass  and  to  be  as  dust  that  is  blown  now  this 
way  and  now  that, -and  in  the  end  is  gathered  to  the  wilderness 
of  lifeless  things. ' ' 

VII. 
SCHOOL  DAYS  OF  THE  POET. 

For  the  purposes  of  poetry  the  education  of  Shakespeare 
according  to  Ben  Johnson  was,  perhaps,  ideal — ' '  a  little  Latin 
and  less  Greek. ' '  An  academic  training  is  necessarily  an  em- 
barrassment to  an  ego  seeking  "a  gesture  of  mine  own."  The 
contemplations  of  ''Theodore  the  Poet"  are  more  directly 
to  the  purpose;  and  just  as  Mr.  Masters  has  conceived  his 
characters  as  drawing  their  philosophy  from  their  occupa- 
tions— "Griffy  the  Cooper"  from  his  tubs  and  "Dow  Kritt" 
from  digging  "all  the  ditches  about  Spoon  River" — so  we 
may  suppose  as  autobiographic  his  conception  of  the  boy  who 

sat  for  long  hours 
On  the  shore  of  the  turbid  Spoon 
With  deep-set  eye,  staring  at  the  door  of 

the  crawfish's  burrow, 
Waiting  for  him  to  appear; 
Who  wondered  in  a  trace  of  thought. 
What  he  knew,  what  he  desired,  and  why  he 
lived  at  all; 

and,  as  a  significant  intimation  of  that  "orientation  of  the 
soul  to  the  conditions  in  life"  which  is  Masters'  own  defini- 
tion of  poetry,  the  introspection  which  completes  the  poem: 

But  later  your  vision  watched  for  men  and 
women 

Hiding  in  burrows  of  fate  amid  great  cities, 

Looking  for  the  souls  of  them  to  come  out, 

So  that  vou  could  see 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  321 

How  they  lived,  and  for  what, 

And  why  they  kept  crawling  so  busily 

Along  the  sandy  way  where  the  water  fails 

As  the  summer  wanes. 

The  ten  years  which  the  poet  spent  in  Lewistown  seem 
to  have  been  variously  employed ;  in  school — both  the  grades 
and  high;  in  newspaper  work  in  a  local  office;  in  sundry  ad- 
ventures in  long-distance  journalism;  and  in  reading  law  in 
his  father's  office — which  undertaking  was  one  of  not  un- 
mixed enthusiasm  and  suffered  the  interruption  of  a  winter 's 
study  at  Knox  College  at  Galesburg,  Illinois.  Also  there  was 
a  continual  preoccupation  with  literature,  especially  poetry, 
and  endless  experiments  in  verse.  Four  hundred  poems 
before  he  was  twenty-three!  It  was  as  a  little  boy  in  the 
grades  that  he  came  under  the  tutelage  of  that  benign  char- 
acter Esther  Sparks,  who  is  the  "Emily  Sparks"  of  the 
"Anthology." 

The  extreme  tenderness  which  Masters  has  brought  to 
the  conception  of  the  women  of  his  characterization  is  in- 
finitely divining;  those  forsaken  women,  "Louise  Smith" 
and  "Mary  McNeely,"  regarding,  each,  her  soul's  disas- 
ter; "Flossie  Cabanis"  transcending  the  sordid  failure  of 
her  life  by  that  prayer  which  was  the  voice  of  her  histrionic 
aspiration;  "Caroline  Branson,"  and  the  tragedy  of  the 
"room  with  lamps;"  "Edith  Conant,"  the  pity  of  her 
unremembered  beauty;  "Elizabeth  Childers,"  who  cries  to 
the  child  who  died  with  her  death  voicing  the  suffering  of 
women  too  fine  for  the  harsh  conditions  of  life;  even  the 
prostitute  "Georgine  Sand  Miner,"  who  cries  out  against 
her  ultimate  degradation. 

If  Daniel  had  only  shot  me  dead! 

Instead  of  stripping  me  naked  of  lies, 

A  harlot  in  body  and  soul ! 

"Emily  Sparks"  is  one  of  the  most  subtly  rendered, 
as  she  is  one  of  the  most  universal,  of  all  the  Spoon  River 
folk.  She  is  long  since  dead,  but  the  "eternal  silence"  of 
her  that  spoke  to  the  soul  of  "Reuben  Pantier"  is  eloquent 
to  a  larger  audience: 


322  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

My  boy,  wherever  you  are, 

Work  for  your  soul's  sake, 

That  all  the  clay  of  you,  and  all  the  dross 
of  you, 

May  yield  to  the  fire  of  you 

Till  the  fire  is  nothing  but  light ! . . . . 

Nothing  but  light! 

It  was  during  his  first  year  in  the  high  school  that  Mas- 
ters came  under  the  influences  of  the  teacher  who  proved 
to  be  his  greatest  inspiration,  and  who  awakened  in  him  an 
abiding  interest  in  literature — Miss  Mary  Fisher. 

Miss  Fisher  was  a  young  woman  of  twenty-seven  when 
she  came  to  Lewistown  in  1885,  and  her  preparation  had  been 
exceptional.  She  had  studied  in  Chicago,  Edinburg  and 
Boston.  At  Boston  she  had  touched  elbows  with  the  Con- 
cord School,  had  caught  the  flame  of  its  enthusiasm  for  let- 
ters and  ideas  and  here  in  Lewistown  in  the  one  year  of  her 
sojourn,  she  held  aloft  the  torch.  Ten  years  later  she  began 
the  publication  of  a  series  of  books  that  established  her 
claim  to  a  place  of  distinction  in  the  field  of  letters  and 
gave  proof  of  her  exceptional  breadth  and  vision  as  an  edu- 
cator. Between  the  years  of  1895  and  1902  she  published 
successively  " Twenty-five  Letters  on  English  Authors," 
"A  Group  of  French  Critics,"  "A  General  Survey  of  Amer- 
ican Literature,"  and  a  novel,  " Gertrude  Dorrence." 

The  inspiration  and  value  of  the  work  of  such  a  teacher 
is  always  incalculable.  In  Miss  Fisher's  group  at  Lewistown 
were  two  others  beside  the  now  illustrious  Edgar  Lee,  who 
were  destined  to  feel  the  stirring  of  ambitions  and  of  un- 
doubted gifts — Julia  Brown,  who  afterwards  became  the  wife 
of  Dr.  William  Strode,  and  of  whom  I  have  already  spoken, 
and  Margaret  Gilman  George. 

Margaret  George,  though  coming  under  the  influence  of 
Miss  Fisher,  was  not  of  the  high  school.  A  faulty  heart 
valve,  which  caused  her  too  early  death,  rendered  her  health 
inadequate  to  the  rigor  of  the  public  school  so  that  it  was 
necessary  for  her  father  to  instruct  her  at  home.  As  a  re- 
sult the  scholarship  of  this  frail  young  girl  was  exceptional. 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        xhe  Spoon  River  Country  323 

Not  only  was  she  a  mistress  of  English,  but  she  had  a  work- 
ing knowledge  of  French  and  was  a  fine  Greek  scholar.  Her 
penchant  was  for  the  classics,  and  she  had  a  remarkable 
knowledge  of  the  Bible.  Among  the  mementoes  which  her 
mother  now  treasures  is  a  little  Oxford  Bible  given  her  by 
the  Poet  when  they  were  both  very  young.  "For  Margaret 
from  Lee"  is  inscribed  on  the  fly-leaf. 

This  period  was  one  full  of  dreams  and  plans  and  small 
exciting  adventures  for  the  ambitious  youngsters.  There  is 
a  delightful  story  of  a  compact  entered  into  by  Edgar  Lee 
and  Margaret,  to  write  the  very  worst  ballad  conceivable 
and  to  undertake  to  get  it  published.  Nothing  came  of  Mas- 
ters' venture — perhaps  he  succeeded  too  completely — but 
Margaret  wrote  a  long  sentimental  tale  in  rhyme  which  she 
called  "The  Ballad  of  the  Dishcloth"  and  sent  it  to  Eugene 
Field  who  was  then  conducting  the  "column"  called  "Flats 
and  Sharps"  in  the  Chicago  Record.  Its  immediate  accept- 
ance filled  her  with  unholy  glee,  but  on  its  publication  it  was 
found  that  Field  had  taken  liberties  with  the  concluding 
stanzas,  and  her  triumph  was  changed  to  chagrin. 

"The  Ballad  of  the  Dishcloth"  concerned  itself  with 
the  love  affair  of  a  housemaid,  her  lover  the  butcher  boy, 
and  a  shadowy  third,  a  rejected  suitor — the  milkman.  The 
dishcloth  was  the  signal  to  the  lover  that  the  mistress  was 
away  and  he  might  venture  upon  a  call.  After  a  time  it  was 
decided  that  he  should  go  away  to  seek  his  fortune,  but 
should  return  within  a  year  to  make  her  his  bride.  True  to 
his  pledge  the  lover  returns,  and  his  emotion  on  finding  the 
dish  cloth  out  and  the  tragic  denouement,  as  described  by 
Margaret,  is  as  follows: 

' '  Oh,  trust  sublime  ! "  he  fondly  cried, 

And  ran  to  kiss  the  signal  white, 
But  as  he  reached  the  casement's  side 

What  tableaux  met  his  frenzied  sight. 

There  stood  false  Susan  with  a  man 
Her  head  reclining  on  his  breast: 

He  loudly  praised  the  dish-cloth  plan 
The  while  her  coral  lips  he  pressed. 


324  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- l- s- H- s- 

One  leap  the  frantic  lover  made 

And  with  the  rival  wiped  the  floor ! 

In  her  own  dishcloth  choked  the  maid 
And  left  the  scene  forever  more. 

But  Gene  Field  had  omitted  the  last  two  stanzas  and 
substituted  in  their  stead: 

There  sat  false  Susan  in  a  chair 

Resplendent  still  in  buxom  charms, 

Holding,  Oh,  horror  and  despair ! 
A  puling  infant  in  her  arms. 

"What  means  this  spectacle?"  said  he, 

Brushing  a  scalding  tear  aside ; 
"I  thought  you  would  not  come,"  said  she, 

"And  so  became  the  milkman's  bride." 

' '  What  means  the  dishcloth  then, ' '  he  cried, 
' '  That  from  your  upper  casement  swings  ? ' ' 

"That's  not  a  dishcloth,"  she  replied, 

' '  That 's  where  we  dry  the  baby 's  things ! ' ' 

The  home  of  Margaret  constituted  the  nucleus  of  what 
might  be  called  the  literary  group  in  Lewistown.  Mr.  B.  Y 
George,  who  was  the  Presbyterian  minister  of  the  place,  was 
a  scholarly,  broadminded  man.  He  occasionally  contrib- 
uted to  the  periodicals,  especially  church  journals;  lectured 
at  intervals  on  literature  and  the  Bible;  took  a  deep  and  in- 
telligent interest  in  the  questions  of  the  day,  and  never 
wearied  of  the  society  of  the  young  folks  growing  up  about 
him.  Mrs.  George  will  be  remembered  chiefly  as  a  person- 
ality— a  woman  who  found  a  delightful  humor  in  the  spec- 
tacle of  life.  She  used  to  give  entertaining  talks  on  George 
Eliot,  Shakespeare  and  the  Brownings  before  Women's 
Clubs  and  in  the  homes  of  "literary"  people,  but  it  was  only 
among  the  intimates  of  the  inner  circle  of  her  friends  that  she 
abandoned  herself  to  those  moods  wherein  impersonation, 
augmented  by  a  natural  gift  of  mimicry,  made  the  relation 
of  the  merest  incident,  having  the  elements  of  social  comedy, 
a  thing  to  be  remembered. 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  325 

The  Georges  had  two  daughters.  The  younger,  Anne,  *is 
now  regarded  as  one  of  the  foremost  educators  in  the  United 
States.  She  is  the  American  representative  of  the  Montes- 
sori  system ;  is  the  head  of  that  school  in  Washington,  D.  C., 
and  to  her  contributions  on  the  subject  to  various  popular 
magazines  is  chiefly  due  the  prompt  and  intelligent  accept- 
ance, in  this  country,  of  the  methods  of  that  school. 

Margaret,  the  elder  daughter,  would  seem  to  have  in- 
herited, in  fortunate  conjunction,  the  intellectuality  of  the 
father  and  the  taste  and  personality  of  the  mother.  "The 
good  stars  met  in  her  horoscope,"  and  only  the  briefness 
of  her  life,  perhaps,  defeated  her  dreams  of  a  place  of  per- 
manence among  the  Lyra  Americana.  In  the  seven  years 
between  her  graduation  from  Lewistown  High  and  her  mar- 
riage her  poems  found  their  way  into  the  best  magazines 
of  the  day;  The  Century,  Atlantic,  Harper's,  Scribner's  and 
many  others.  Her  poem  "Shrived,"  which  appeared  in 
Lippincott 's,  elicited  from  the  editor  of  that  magazine  praise 
that  did  much  to  establish  her  place  among  the  younger 
poets,  and  already  she  had  begun  to  be  spoken  of  as  the 
"coming  poet  of  the  West."  In  1890  she  collaborated  with 
Mr.  Davidson  in  the  production  of  a  novel,  but  this  was 
merely  an  experiment  and  proved  less  interesting  to  her 
than  her  verse.  A  photograph  of  her  in  her  young  girlhood 
shows  an  exquisitely  delicate  profile,  and  in  the  delineation 
of  the  high  fine  brow  and  the  full  curved  mouth,  that  supreme 
combination  found  in  women  who  achieve  in  love  and  art 
— passion  and  intellect. 

She  married  in  1895  Mr.  W.  T.  Davidson,  and  left  at 
her  death  a  little  son,  Gilman,  who  was  in  the  late  war  with 
the  flying  corps  in  France. 

Several  years  after  her  death  her  husband  began  to 
collect  her  poems  from  various  sources,  and  to  print  them 
in  the  columns  of  his  paper  under  the  caption  "Her 
Songs."  "I  have  found,"  he  says  by  way  of  explanation 
of  the  previously  unpublished  verses,  "a  trunkful  of  manu- 

*Miss  Anne  George,  now  Mrs.  Robert  Miller,  Evanston,  Illinois. 


326  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

scripts,  written  many  of  them,  on  scraps  of  paper,  some  in 
dim  penciling,  some  mere  fragments  with  pages  missing;  a 
holy  jumble  of  precious  gems." 

As  if  some  prescience  of  her  early  doom  had  been  vouch- 
safed her — she  died  of  heart  failure — there  was  found  among 
the  many  exquisite  songs  of  gladness  and  love,  and  hope  and 
heart-break — those  "things  that  perish  never" — "Mora- 
tura. ' ' 

I  am  the  mown  grass,  dying  at  your  feet — 
The  pale  grass  gasping  faintly  in  the  sun : 
I  shall  be  dead  long,  long  'ere  day  is  done. 
That  you  may  say, ' '  The  air  today  was  sweet. ' ' 
I  am  the  mown  grass  dying  at  your  feet. 

I  am  the  white  syringa,  falling  now 
When  some  one  shakes  the  bough ; 
What  matter  if  I  lose  my  life's  brief  noon? 
You  laugh,  "A  snow  in  June?" 
I  am  the  white  syringa,  falling  now. 

I  am  the  waning  lamp  that  flickers  on, 
Striving  to  give  my  old  unclouded  light 
Among  the  rest  that  makes  your  garden  bright : 
Let  me  burn  still  till  all  my  oil  is  gone. 
I  am  the  waning  lamp  that  flickers  on. 

I  am  your  singer,  singing  my  last  note — 
Death's  fingers  clutch  my  throat! 
New  grass  will  grow,  new  flowers  bloom  and  fall, 
New  lamps  play  out  against  your  garden  wall. 
I  am  your  singer,  singing  my  last  note. 

VIII. 

HERE  AND  THERE. 

That  all  the  people  of  the  " Anthology"  are  not  "sleep- 
ing on  the  hill"  is  evidenced  by  the  occasional  presence  upon 
the  streets  of  Lewistown  of  an  uncouth  individual,  ragged 
and  unshorn,  whom  inquiry  discovers  to  be  that  digger  of 
ditches  about  Spoon  River,  "Dow  Kritt".  His  occupation  is 
in  harmony  with  his  appearance,  and  whatever  his  philosophy 


.-•«* 


vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        xhe  Spoon  River  Country  327 

might  prove  to  be  on  close  acquaintance  it  is  obvious  that  he 
does  not  "need  to  die  to  learn  about  roots".  A  certain 
Charley  Metcalf  is  pointed  out  as  "Willie  Metcalf".  His  oc- 
cupation, and  his  place  of  residence  as  well,  is  a  local  livery 
stable.  His  talent  for  handling  horses  is  well  known;  indeed 
his  sense-oneness  with  all  forms  of  nature  suggest  a  certain 
atavism.  A  simple,  harmless  soul!  "William  Jones",  who 
has  been  identified  as  Dr.  Strode,  late  of  Bernadotte,  is  daily 
seen  about  the  round  of  his  professional  calls  or  occupied  with 
civic  business.  A  room  of  his  office  suite  is  occupied  by  his 
collections  and  one  great  cabinet  and  several  tiers  of  moth- 
proof boxes  containing  bird-skins  (each  wrapped  in  its  tiny 
shroud)  have  obtruded  themselves  within  the  confines  of  the 
office  proper. 

But  every  passage  about  the  town  evokes,  for  the  lovers 
of  the  ' '  Anthology ' ',  the  drama  of  the  past.  The  courthouse 
which  "Silas  Dement",  on  his  return  from  Joliet,  found  built 
on  the  site  of  the  one  which  he  had  burned;  the  bank  whose 
failure  involved  not  less  than  ten  characters  of  the  "An- 
thology"; and  Beadle's  Opera  House  (the  "hall  of  Nicolas 
Bindle")  all  stand  as  monuments  to  the  past,  and  keep  in  the 
steadfastness  of  brick  and  stone,  "the  glory  of  their  fallen 
day." 

Beadle's  Opera  House,  which  belongs  to  the  estate  of  the 
late  Mr.  R.  M.  Hind,  has  passed  into  disuse  as  a  place  of  en- 
tertainment since  the  advent  of  the  cinematograph.  Its  fres- 
coes are  dim  with  time  and  the  spider  has  made  his  lair  in  the 
long  deep  recesses  of  the  windows ;  the  walls  of  the  dressing 
rooms  are  scrawled  with  the  names  of  many  mummers;  and 

on  the  deep  stage  . 

that  overlooks  the  chairs 

and  where  a  pop-eyed  daub 

Of  Shakespeare,  very  like  the  hired  man 
Of  Christian  Dahlmann,  brow  and  pointed 

beard, 
Upon  a  drab  proscenium  outward  stared, 

odd  bits  of  "property"  stand  about  with  a  pathetic  patience. 
Here  walk  the  ghosts  of  "Flossie  Cabanis"  and  of  "Ralph 


328  Josephine  Craven  Chandler  J- L  s- H- s- 

Barrett,  the  coining  romantic  actor"  who  enthralled  her  soul; 
here  "Harry  Wilmans"  heard  the  Sunday-school  superin- 
tendent make  that  flamboyant  speech  which  sent  him  to  the 
rice  field  near  Manila  and  through 

days  of  loathing  and  nights  of  fear 

To  the  hour  of  the  charge  through  the  steam- 
ing swamp 

Following  the  flag : 

and  here  was  staged  one  of  the  episodes  of  "The  Spooniad" 
which  "Jonathan  Swift  Somers"  conceived  in  epic  mood  but 
never  carried  to  completion.  Of  those  two  conflicting  forces 
in  Spoon  River  it  was  the  liberals  who 

in  the  hall  of  Nicolas  Bindle  held 

Wise  converse  and  inspiriting  debate. 

Lewistown  has  two  cemeteries.   The  one 

Where  holy  ground  is  and  the  cross 
Marks  every  grave 

lies  to  the  east  of  the  town.  It  covers  three  slopes  of  a  hill  on 
the  summit  of  which  is  a  great  gray  Christ  upon  a  cross. 
Gallighers,  Maloneys,  0 'Daniels  and  many  other  names  be- 
speaking a  Celtic  origin  are  found  upon  those  gravestones 
but  one  looks  in  vain  for  the  name  of  "Father  Malloy". 
There  never  has  been  a  Father  Malloy  in  the  town,  it  ap- 
pears, but  a  certain  Father  Thebes  answers  to  that  descrip- 
tion. Every  one  was  fond  of  Father  Thebes,  especially  the 
boys.  But  one  insists  on  a  Father  Malloy.  The  name  car- 
ries conviction — and  "Spoon  River"  is  a  large  territory. 

The  Protestant  cemetery,  which  also  is  on  a  hill — which 
covers  several  gentle  knolls  in  fact — is  north  of  Lewistown 
and  is  separated  from  the  town  by  a  ravine.  No  pleasanter 
place  could  be  found  for  long,  long  sleeping.  A  winding  road 
leads  through  it,  flanked  on  either  side,  in  the  summer,  by 
purple  phlox;  great  elms  and  small  sweet  cedars  fill  the  place 
with  restful  shadows  and  with  pleasant  scents  and  sounds; 
and  on  the  central  eminence  stand  those  limestone  pillars 
already  hallowed  by  the  memory  of  Lincoln  and  inscribed  to 
"Our  Patriot  Dead".  All  about  one  are  names,  that  to  the 
literary  pilgrim,  are  essentially  "Spoon  River"  names;  aE 


'OVER     ME     A     FOND     FATHER     ERECTED     THIS     MARBLE     SHAFT     ON 
WHICH    STANDS    THE    FIGURE    OF    A    WOMAN." 


Vol.  xiv.  NOS.  3-4        The  Spoon  River  Country  329 

about  one  on  the  quaint  moss-grown  slabs  are  willow  trees 
and  gates  ajar,  harps  and  lambs  and  upward  pointing  hands. 
Suddenly  through  the  trees  one  is  startled  to  descry  the  figure 
of  a  woman  upon  a  marble  shaft.  Even  the  long  grasses  can- 
not stay  the  impatience  of  the  feet!  "  'Percy  Bysshe  Shel- 
ley* ",  one  says  softly  with  amazement.  "Can  there  really  be 
a  'Percy  Bysshe  Shelley'  in  this  place?"  But  astonishment  is 
scarcely  less  on  finding  upon  the  pediment  that  supports  the 

classic  figure 

William  Cullen  Bryant 

Died  March  24, 1875 
Age  24  years. 

Investigation  proves  that  the  young  man  was  a  relative 
and  namesake  of  the  poet.  His  father  was  that  Honorable 
H.  L.  Bryant  who  introduced  Douglas  to  his  audience  in  Proc- 
tor's Grove  on  the  occasion  of  his  great  speech.  William 
Cullen  like  "Percy  Bysshe  Shelly"  of  the  "Anthology"  was 
the  victim  of  an  accident,  having  been  killed  by  the  discharge 
of  a  gun  while  duck  hunting  on  Thompson's  Lake.  The 
marble  statue  is  a  dramatic  figure  against  the  massed  back- 
ground of  the  cedars,  and  the  coincidence  of  the  two  names 
i&  a  sufficiently  illuminating  commentary  upon  the  literary 
method  of  Masters. 

In  all  this  silent  place  one  may  hear  no  sound  save  the 
wind  in  the  branches  of  the  trees,  the  insect  voices  in  the  long 
grass  and  the  importunate  incessant  crying  of  a  flock  of  tit- 
mice that  have  their  haunt  in  the  neighboring  ravine.  Only 
the  "memories"  are  here,  their 

eyes  closed  with  the  weariness  of  tears 
An  immeasurable  weariness! 

And  yet  the  loiterer  for  an  hour  will  find  in  these  grassy  paths 
now  bright  with  sun,  now  soft  with  shadows,  these  low 
mounds  and  unostentatious  gravestones,  how  all  things  con- 
spire for  peace,  and  those  who  are  a  little  weary  may  find 
themselves  reflecting,  as  Shelley  in  the  Protestant  cemetery 
without  the  walls  of  Rome  where  his  body  came  ultimately 
to  rest:  "It  would  almost  make  one  fall  in  love  with  Death 
itself  to  think  one  should  be  buried  in  so  sweet  a  place." 


UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS-URBANA 
917.73C36S  C001 

THE  SPOON  RIVER  COUNTRY  SPRINGFIELD 


30112025337541 


